Ten and a Quarter New Tales of Page 4

  ‘You didn’t go,’ the voice said, and there came the sound of a woman’s scream. Daniel shuddered. He thought of that horrible cartoon which wasn’t at all true to life.

  ‘You damn –’ he began. ‘You lowdown filthy swine.’

  ‘There’s no need to be rude. If her toe doesn’t come in the morning, blame the post office. They’ve not been too reliable lately. Go to your stockbroker. Now.’

  Daniel went. His stockbroker told him it was a very bad time to sell, and wouldn’t Mr Derbyshire reconsider? Sure that the scream he had heard was made by Prunella while in the process of having her toe amputated, Daniel said no, he wouldn’t reconsider. Back home, he drank a lot of brandy. He thought of phoning Joy, and then thought better of it. He told José that Prunella was staying with her mother, and he told her mother that Prunella had gone to the country.

  The next two days were extremely unpleasant. The man phoned four times, but Daniel wasn’t allowed to speak to Prunella, who, he was told, was ‘feeling too unwell.’ On Thursday morning the man said, ‘You’ll be collecting the cash today, right? Put it in a suitcase, and at seven sharp take the suitcase to Charing Cross Station. Leave it there in a left-luggage locker, and this is what you’re to do with the key. Take it into the Embankment Gardens and push it into the earth on the left-hand side of the statue of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Got that? The statue’s the one of the old boy with this woman crying and draping herself about. Muse of music or something. As a matter of fact, she reminds me of your wife. Especially at this moment. If you take the police with you or don’t bring the cash, I won’t be back here by eight-thirty. And if I’m not back here by eight-thirty, we cut Mrs Derbyshire’s throat. She’s had some experience of the knife already, and she doesn’t like it.’

  Trembling, Daniel took the morning papers which his secretary handed him. On the front page of the top one was a photograph of Princess Anne at a charity performance of Firebird, and in the background could be seen Joy, holding the arm of a tall handsome man. He let out a groan.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Derbyshire?’ his secretary asked.

  ‘Yes – that is, no. Never mind. Call me a cab, will you? I have to go to my bank.’

  The bank provided him with a guard to escort him and his large suitcase back to the Derbyshire Building. Daniel put the suitcase under his desk and stared at it. A quarter of a million. What a price to pay for a woman you don’t even want! He had intended, within the next few months, to settle just this amount on his son and the same amount on his daughter. That, now, would be impossible. And they might kill Prunella anyway. It would be a fine thing to lose the money and Prunella.

  On the other hand, wouldn’t it literally be a fine thing? Daniel didn’t think it would bother him so much to rob his children of part of their patrimony if by parting with that money he could rid himself of Prunella for good.

  Immediately he castigated himself for the thought. But it kept returning. What a pity the kidnappers didn’t have a keener insight, and had said instead that for a quarter of a million they would kill his wife … He must be overwrought, he thought, his mind unhinged by all this anxiety.

  Five o’clock. He sent his secretary home and then he opened the large suitcase. The notes were new and crisp and pale lilac in colour – 12,500 of them in packets. It was a great deal of money, a queen’s ransom. But he would willingly and happily have parted with it if it could have bought him Joy. Instead, it was going to buy him Prunella.

  At this point a terrible thought came to Daniel. Until now he had considered going to the police, considered stalling, but he had never considered simply not paying. And yet what a fool he was to think it would have been preferable if the man had asked for money to kill her rather than to save her! To kill her need cost him nothing. All he had to do was not pay. Wasn’t this, in fact, the answer to the dilemma by which he had been beset for nearly a year?

  But poor Prunella, frightened, lonely, cold, maltreated. She was his wife, and once he had loved her. He owed it to her to try to save her. Having closed the suitcase, he sent for his chauffeur and went home.

  ‘Don’t put the car away, George. I shall need you again at six-thirty.’

  He took the suitcase into his study. Prunella would be back with him by – when? Ten? Midnight? Without, very likely, one of her toes. Still, that hadn’t been his fault. Not really. It was disagreeable to think of anyone being killed by having her throat cut. But was there any agreeable way of being killed?

  Suicide was a different matter. Obviously it would be preferable to kill oneself with pills and liquor rather than by hanging. But if one were going to be killed, there seemed very little to choose between being strangled or blindfolded and shot or run over by a car. There wasn’t a nice way of dying by someone else’s violence.

  They would kill her anyway, he thought. They wouldn’t dare take the risk of her later being able to identify them. And he would have thrown that quarter of a million away just as effectively as if he had sunk it in the Thames. Besides, there was always the chance they wouldn’t kill her and the money be lost anyway.

  At 6:15 he had another look inside the suitcase. Already, by what he had done, he had lost a couple of days’ interest on that money. They would kill Prunella and dump her body by some roadside. The police would see that he’d had the money ready and realize that the gang had killed his wife before he’d had time to pay the ransom. The British public would sympathize with him and understand when, in his grief, he tried to heal his broken heart by remarrying his first wife, the mother of his children.

  Six-thirty. The Rolls-Royce stood waiting on the driveway. Daniel poured himself a large brandy. He waited till 6:40 and then rang the bell for his chauffeur.

  ‘Put the car away, George. I won’t be needing it again tonight.’

  José served him his solitary dinner at 7:15. Daniel took one mouthful of soup, gagged and rushed to the bathroom where he was sick.

  The man phoned at 9:00. Prunella was still alive, minus a hand and a toe. It wasn’t very nice for her because they couldn’t, under the circumstances, call a doctor to attend her.

  The man said, ‘Follow the prescribed procedure at nine in the morning, Charing Cross Station and the locker key in the earth by the Sullivan statue.’

  Daniel didn’t sleep at all. He kept throwing up all night, but he didn’t take the suitcase to the station in the morning.

  All that day there was no sign from the kidnappers. Late that evening the man phoned again. Daniel put the receiver down without speaking, and after that there were no more calls. His body had begun to twitch and jerk, sweat kept breaking out all over him, and his heartbeat was irregular, sometimes pounding and sometimes seeming to stop altogether in a very frightening way.

  But on Saturday morning a great peace descended on him. It was over now, it must be. Prunella was dead, and after a decent interval he could go to Joy, a free, ardent wooer.

  No work today. Having made up his mind to get in touch with the police during the next few hours – it would be a bit ticklish, thinking of the right things to say – he took Prunella’s two Great Danes and the Dalmatian out for a walk. When he got back he went straight into the study to plan his phone tactics with the police. The large suitcase was open on the desk, and Prunella was standing over it, examining its contents.

  He felt himself turn white. He felt as if all the blood had rushed out of his tissues and charged into his heart to start up that hideous pounding once more.

  ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he managed to whisper.

  She faced him. She looked extremely well, though somewhat disgruntled. It was plain she had all her fingers and toes intact.

  ‘What did you get the money for if you weren’t going to pay up?’

  ‘I was,’ said Daniel. ‘I was stalling.’

  ‘Like hell. You can come in now, Jim.’ Prunella opened the door to admit the minicab driver who looked much younger and far more strapping than Daniel remembered him. ‘Jim, this is
my loving husband,’ she said. ‘Funny, I ought to have known it wouldn’t work.’

  Daniel sat down. ‘Be kind enough to explain,’ he said icily.

  ‘I’ve been in love with Jim for the past six months, but I knew I wouldn’t get much out of you if I left you. And Jim’s only got his minicab. So we figured this out. Sorry, Jim, I’m afraid this is it. He doesn’t think I’m worth a quarter of a million, so I’ll have to stay with him.’

  ‘Stay!’ Daniel shouted. ‘I wouldn’t have you here after what you’ve done for twice what’s in that suitcase! Of all the filthy cruel tricks to play on anyone! You don’t know what I’ve been through. This has probably caused permanent injury to my health. I’ve lost hundreds in interest on that money.’ He was choking with rage. ‘I’ll divorce you and name that crook, and God help me, I won’t give you a damned penny!’

  ‘You haven’t any proof,’ said Prunella, ‘and we won’t give you any. From what José says, you’ve told everyone I’ve been with mother.’ She sighed. ‘Jim and I know when we’re beaten. We shall part here and now forever.’

  ‘What were you going to do?’ Daniel growled.

  ‘Well, since you ask, Jim would have hung onto the cash, and after the fuss had died down I’d have left you and joined him. But that’s out of the question now. It won’t be very nice for me living with a man who doesn’t care if I get my throat cut, but I haven’t any choice.’ Prunella took her coat off. ‘And now I’d better see what José is doing about lunch. I’ll try and be a better wife to you now, Dan, to make up for all the trouble I’ve caused. I won’t go out so much and we’ll stay in every evening together.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Daniel. ‘I won’t stand for it. I’ll leave you.’ But he couldn’t. Joy wouldn’t have him if he left her. He jumped up. ‘Don’t you understand I don’t want you!’

  ‘Only too well,’ said Prunella, glancing at the suitcase, ‘but we’ll get over that. We’ll work at our marriage, we must. Goodbye, Jim. It was a fine idea while it lasted.’

  Daniel seized the suitcase, frantically fastening its clasps. ‘Take it,’ he shouted. ‘Take it and go.’

  ‘D’you mean that?’ said the voice of the man on the phone. Jim grinned broadly. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Thank you, Dan. That’s very generous of you. And just one other thing. May I take the dogs too?’

  ‘Take what you like and get out of my house!’

  He watched them go off down the street together, Jim carrying the quarter of a million in the suitcase, Prunella, one arm linked with his, the other holding the dogs on their triple leash. A large brandy steadied him. No one would believe that a man’s own wife could do a thing like that. Of all the bare-faced abominable treachery! And those disgusting threats of mutilation while, no doubt, she’d been laughing in the background, God, how he’d have liked to smash them both! All he hoped now was that they’d get mugged, maimed for life, for the contents of that suitcase.

  And then, as his rage cooled into seething resentment, he realized what had been achieved. He was free. Prunella had left him of her own accord. Within three or four months he could be divorced. He rang for George, got into the car, and told George to drive him to a certain mews in Mayfair.

  Leaning back against the cushions, he thought of the price he had paid for Joy. Surely no woman of fifty-two, once discarded, had ever before been purchased for a quarter of a million? One day he would tell her. When they were married. But she was worth it. He longed for her with the passion of a boy of twenty, though when he was twenty and courting her for the first time, he had never felt this yearning and this tremulous urgency.

  Thirty years ago he had gone to her in her father’s house on his old motorbike; now he was going to her in a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, having paid a fortune for the privilege of asking her once more to be his wife. His heart raced. He ran up the steps of her house and rang the bell.

  She opened the door herself. Daniel thought she looked twenty years younger, perhaps thirty years, yet far more lovely than when he had first seen her. Her silver hair was an anachronism above that youthful flushed face.

  ‘Dan! How lovely. How nice of you to come.’

  She turned and led him into the living room before he could take her in his arms. There was a man standing by the table. Strange men kept appearing in his life today, but this one wasn’t hiding. He was pouring champagne. Daniel observed vaguely that there were other people there too – strange people getting in his way on this day of all days.

  He recognized the champagne pourer as Joy’s escort in the newspaper photograph. She must get rid of him and all the others, he thought, and he turned to her impulsively, arrogantly. She smiled and took his arm.

  ‘Dan dear,’ she said, ‘I want you to meet Paul. We were married this morning.’

  The Irony of Hate

  I murdered Brenda Goring for what I suppose is the most unusual of motives. She came between me and my wife.

  By that I don’t mean to say that there was anything abnormal in their relationship. They were merely close friends, though ‘merely’ is hardly the word to use in connection with a relationship which alienates and excludes a once-loved husband. I murdered her to get my wife to myself once more, but instead I have parted us perhaps for ever, and I await with dread, with impotent panic, with the most awful helplessness I have ever known, the coming trial.

  By setting down the facts – and the irony, the awful irony that runs through them like a sharp glittering thread – I may come to see things more clearly. I may find some way to convince those inexorable powers that be of how it really was; to make Defending Counsel believe me and not raise his eyebrows and shake his head; to ensure, at any rate, that if Laura and I must be separated she will know as she sees me taken from the court to my long imprisonment, that the truth is known and justice done.

  Alone here with nothing else to do, with nothing to wait for but that trial, I could write reams about the character, the appearance, the neuroses, of Brenda Goring. I could write the great hate novel of all time. In this context, though, much of it would be irrelevant, and I shall be as brief as I can.

  Some character in Shakespeare says of a woman, ‘Would I had never seen her!’ And the reply is: ‘Then you would have left unseen a very wonderful piece of work.’ Well, would indeed I had never seen Brenda. As for her being a wonderful piece of work, I suppose I would agree with that too. Once she had had a husband. To be rid of her for ever, no doubt, he paid her enormous alimony and had settled on her a lump sum with which she bought the cottage up the lane from our house. On our village she made the impact one would expect of such a newcomer. Wonderful she was, an amazing refreshment to all those retired couples and cautious weekenders, with her clothes, her long blonde hair, her sports car, her talents and her jet-set past. For a while, that is. Until she got too much for them to take.

  From the first she fastened on to Laura. Understandable in a way, since my wife was the only woman in the locality who was of comparable age, who lived there all the time and who had no job. But surely – or so I thought at first – she would never have singled out Laura if she had had a wider choice. To me my wife is lovely, all I could ever want, the only woman I have ever really cared for, but I know that to others she appears shy, colourless, a simple and quiet little housewife. What, then, had she to offer to that extrovert, that bright bejewelled butterfly? She gave me the beginning of the answer herself.

  ‘Haven’t you noticed the way people are starting to shun her, darling? The Goldsmiths didn’t ask her to their party last week and Mary Williamson refuses to have her on the fête committee.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ I said. ‘The way she talks and the things she talks about.’

  ‘You mean her love affairs and all that sort of thing? But, darling, she’s lived in the sort of society where that’s quite normal. It’s natural for her to talk like that, it’s just that she’s open and honest.’

  ‘She’s not living in that so
rt of society now,’ I said, ‘and she’ll have to adapt if she wants to be accepted. Did you notice Isabel Goldsmith’s face when Brenda told that story about going off for a weekend with some chap she’d picked up in a bar? I tried to stop her going on about all the men her husband named in his divorce action, but I couldn’t. And then she’s always saying, “When I was living with so-and-so” and “That was the time of my affair with what’s-his-name.” Elderly people find that a bit upsetting, you know.’

  ‘Well, we’re not elderly,’ said Laura, ‘and I hope we can be a bit more broad-minded. You do like her, don’t you?’

  I was always very gentle with my wife. The daughter of clever domineering parents who belittled her, she grew up with an ineradicable sense of her own inferiority. She is a born victim, an inviter of bullying, and therefore I have tried never to bully her, never even to cross her. So all I said was that Brenda was all right and that I was glad, since I was out all day, that she had found a friend and companion of her own age.

  And if Brenda had befriended and companioned her only during the day, I daresay I shouldn’t have objected. I should have got used to the knowledge that Laura was listening, day in and day out, to stories of a world she had never known, to hearing illicit sex and duplicity glorified, and I should have been safe in the conviction that she was incorruptible. But I had to put up with Brenda myself in the evenings when I got home from my long commuting. There she would be, lounging on our sofa, in her silk trousers or long skirt and high boots, chain-smoking. Or she would arrive with a bottle of wine just as we had sat down to dinner and involve us in one of those favourite debates of hers on the lines of ‘Is marriage a dying institution?’ or ‘Are parents necessary?’ And to illustrate some specious point of hers she would come out with some personal experience of the kind that had so upset our elderly friends.