would be, had hoped for it, the shock was so great and I had already been feeling so swimmy and strange, that all I wanted was to throw myself down too and close my eyes and sleep. That was impossible. I turned off the cooker. I checked that there was no blood on my trousers and my shoes, though of course there was plenty on the raincoat, and then I staggered out, switching off the light behind me.
I don’t know how I found my way back, it was so dark and by then I was lightheaded and my heart was drumming. I just had the presence of mind to strip off the raincoat and the gloves and push them into our garden incinerator. In the morning I would have to get up enough strength to burn them before Brenda’s body was found. The knife I washed and put back in the drawer.
Laura came back about five minutes after I had got myself to bed.
She had been gone less than half an hour. I turned over and managed to raise myself up to ask her why she was back so soon. It seemed to me that she had a strange distraught look about her.
“What’s the matter?” I mumbled. “Were you worried about me?”
“No,” she said, “no,” but she didn’t come up close to me or put her hand on my forehead. “It was — Isabel Goldsmith told me something — I was upset — I…It’s no use talking about it now, you’re too ill.” She said in a sharper tone than I had ever heard her use,
“Can I get you anything?”
“I just want to sleep,” I said.
“I shall sleep in the spare room. Good night.”
That was reasonable enough, but we had never slept apart before during the whole of our marriage, and she could hardly have been afraid of catching the flu, having only just got over it herself. But I was in no state to worry about that, and I fell into the troubled nightmare-ridden sleep of fever. I remember one of those dreams.
It was of Laura finding Brenda’s body herself, a not unlikely eventuality.
However, she didn’t find it. Brenda’s cleaner did. I knew what must have happened because I saw the police car arrive from my window.
An hour or so later Laura came in to tell me the news which she had got from Jack Williamson.
“It must have been the same man who killed Peggy,” she said.
I felt better already. Things were going well. “My poor darling,”
I said, “you must feel terrible, you were such close friends.”
She said nothing. She straightened my bedclothes and left the room. I knew I should have to get up and burn the contents of the incinerator, but I couldn’t get up. I put my feet out and reached for the floor, but it was as if the floor came up to meet me and threw me back again. I wasn’t over-worried. The police would think what Laura thought, what everyone must think.
That afternoon they came, a chief inspector and a sergeant. Laura brought them up to our bedroom and they talked to us together.
The chief inspector said he understood we were close friends of the dead woman, wanted to know when we had last seen her and what we had been doing on the previous evening. Then he asked if we had any idea at all as to who had killed her.
“That maniac who murdered the other woman, of course,” said Laura.
“I can see you don’t read the papers,” he said.
Usually we did. It was my habit to read a morning paper in the office and to bring an evening paper home with me. But I had been at home ill. It turned out that a man had been arrested on the previous morning for the murder of Peggy Daley. The shock made me flinch and I’m sure I turned pale. But the policemen didn’t seem to notice. They thanked us for our co-operation, apologized for disturbing a sick man, and left. When they had gone I asked Laura what Isabel had said to upset her the night before. She came up to me and put her arms round me.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Poor Brenda’s dead and it was a horrible way to die, but — well, I must be very wicked — but I’m not sorry. Don’t look at me like that, darling. I love you and I know you love me, and we must forget her and be as we used to be. You know what I mean.”
I didn’t, but I was glad whatever it was had blown over. I had enough on my plate without a coldness between me and my wife. Even though Laura was beside me that night, I hardly slept for worrying about the stuff in that incinerator. In the morning I put up the best show I could of being much better. I dressed and announced, in spite of Laura’s expostulations, that I was going into the garden. The police were there already, searching all our gardens, actually digging up Brenda’s.
They left me alone that day and the next, but they came in once and interviewed Laura on her own. I asked her what they had said, but she passed it off quite lightly. I supposed she didn’t think I was well enough to be told they had been enquiring about my movements and my attitude towards Brenda.
“Just a lot of routine questions, darling,” she said, but I was sure she was afraid for me, and a barrier of her fear for me and mine for myself came up between us. It seems incredible but that Sunday we hardly spoke to each other and when we did Brenda’s name wasn’t mentioned. In the evening we sat in silence my arm round Laura, her head on my shoulder, waiting, waiting…
The morning brought the police with a search warrant. They asked Laura to go into the living room and me to wait in the study. I knew then that it was only a matter of time. They would find the knife, and of course they would find Brenda’s blood on it. I had been feeling so ill when I cleaned it that now I could no longer remember whether I had scrubbed it or simply rinsed it under the tap.
After a long while the chief inspector came in alone.
“You told us you were a close friend of Miss Goring’s.”
“I was friendly with her,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
“She was my wife’s friend.”
He took no notice of this. “You didn’t tell us you were on intimate terms with her, that you were, in point of fact, having a sexual relationship with her.”
Nothing he could have said would have astounded me more.
“That’s absolute rubbish!”
“Is it? We have it on sound authority.”
“What authority?” I said. “Or is that the sort of thing you’re not allowed to say?”
“I see no harm in telling you,” he said easily. “Miss Goring herself informed two women friends of hers in London of the fact. She told one of your neighbors she met at a party in your house. You were seen to spend evenings alone with Miss Goring while your wife was ill, and we have a witness who saw you kissing her good night.”
Now I knew what it was that Isabel Goldsmith had told Laura which had so distressed her. The irony of it, the irony…Why hadn’t I, knowing Brenda’s reputation and knowing Brenda’s fantasies, suspected what construction would be put on my assumed friendship with her? Here was motive, the lack of which I had relied on as my last resort. Men do kill their mistresses, from jealousy, from frustration, from fear of discovery.
But surely I could turn Brenda’s fantasies to my own use?
“She had dozens of men friends, lovers, whatever you like to call them. Any of them could have killed her.”
“On the contrary,” said the chief inspector, “apart from her ex-husband who is in Australia, we have been able to discover no man in her life but yourself.”
I cried out desperately, “I didn’t kill her! I swear I didn’t.”
He looked surprised. “Oh, we know that.” For the first time he called me sir. “We know that, sir. No one is accusing you of anything.
We have Dr. Lawson’s word for it that you were physically incapable of leaving your bed that night, and the raincoat and gloves we found in your incinerator are not your property.”
Fumbling in the dark, swaying, the sleeves of the raincoat too short, the shoulders too tight…“Why are you wearing those clothes?”
she had asked before I stabbed her.
“I want you to try and keep calm, sir,” he said very gently. But I have never been calm since. I have confessed again and again, I have written statements, I have expostulated, raved, gone over with them every detail of what I did that night, I have wept.
Then I said nothing. I could only stare at him. “I came in here to you, sir,” he said, “simply to confirm a fact
