Till Death Do Us Part

spirits, a blackness like an extinguisher-cap, descended on him as the noise of that motor-car faded away.

Sir Harvey Gilman, he thought, had read his mind with profound clearness.

As a first consideration, he wasn't thinking about murder at all. He wasn't thinking about the men Lesley was supposed to have killed. He was thinking about the men she professed to have loved before they died.

Scattered words and phrases, sometimes whole sentences, returned to him and jostled through his head with audible vividness, as though he could hear them all at the same time.

'That little girl, as you call her, is forty-one years old.' 'Prostration and floods of tears.' 'Slightly second- hand.' 'A gross old man.' 'Their bedroom.' 'A dreadful coincidence or mistake.' 'Don't you find this situation just a little suspicious ? Just a little unsavoury ?'

Infantile. No doubt! Puerile. No doubt 1

He tried to tell himself so. But this is how a person in love really does feel; and he loved Lesley, and therefore he raged. If those words had been deliberately chosen, each as a tiny knife to nick against the same nerve, they could not have had more of an effect.

He found himself trying to create mental pictures of these men. Burton Foster, the American lawyer, he pictured as a swaggering good-natured sort of chap with a suspicious manner which could be the more easily hoodwinked. It was not difficult to imagine Mr Davies, the 'gross old man', against the background of his 'big, florid, old-fashioned house'.

Martin Belford, the last of the three, remained more shadowy yet for some reason less disliked. Young, it appeared. Probably careless and genial. Belford didn't seem to matter so much.

If you regarded it with half an eye of reason, to stand here disliking dead men, torturing yourself with the images of persons you had never met and now never could meet, was the height of absurdity. What should matter, what did matter, what had seemed to matter most in every criminal record, was the blatant fact of a hypodermic full of poison.

'She can't help herself.' 'A psychic disease.' 'This girl isn't normal.' 'She won't be cheated of the thrill.' These were the words which should have come back to him first; and, with them, a vision of a stealthy flushed face beside a wall-safe.

Facts? Oh, yes.

He had mouthed a lot of fine words about a mistake. But in his heart of hearts Dick Markham didn't believe in a mistake. Scotland Yard didn't make mistakes like that. And yet, even so, it was the first set of Sir Harvey's phrases rather than the second which returned to jar and pierce and inflame him. If only she hadn't told him all those lies about her past life...

But she hadn't told him any lies. She hadn't told him anything at all.

Oh, Christ, why was everything so complicated I Dick struck his hand on the top of the gate-post. The lights of his cottage were shining up there behind him, making the dew gleam on the grass under the windows, and illuminating the crazy-paved path to the front door. Even as he started to walk towards it, he was conscious of a sense of loneliness - intense, unpleasant loneliness - as though something had been cut away from him. It startled him, because he had thought he liked loneliness. And now he was afraid of it. The cottage seemed a hollow shell, booming as he closed the front door behind him. He walked down the passage to the study, opened the door, and stopped short. On the sofa in the study sat Lesley.

CHAPTER 6

SHE had been absentmindedly turning over the pages of a magazine, and looked up quickly as the door opened.

A fat-bowled lamp on the table behind the sofa brought out the smoothness of Lesley's clear skin as she raised her eyes. It shone on the soft brown hair, curling outwards at the shoulders. She had changed her white frock for one of dark green, with winking buttons.'Cette belle anglaise, tres chic tres distinguee’ Not a line showed in the smooth flesh of the neck. Her wide-open, innocent brown eyes looked frightened.

Neither of them spoke for a moment Perhaps Lesley noticed the expression on his face.

She threw aside the magazine, got up, and ran towards him.

He kissed her - after a fashion.

'Dick,' Lesley said quietly. 'What's wrong?'

'Wrong?'

‘She stood back at arm's length to study him. The candid eyes went over his face searchingly.

'You've - gone away,' she said, and shook him by the arms. 'You're not there any longer. What is it?' Then, quickly:' Is it this fortune-teller? Sir - Sir Harvey Gilman ? How is he?'

'He's as well as can be expected.'

'That means he's going to die, doesn't it?' asked Lesley. Enlightenment seemed to come to her. 'Dick, listen! Is that why you're looking and acting like this?' Then she regarded him with horror. 'You don't think I did that deliberately, do you?'

' No, of course not!'

'So help me,' he swore to himself, 'I will not drop a single hint! No incautious word, no blurted question that would give the show away' The whole thing was full of pitfalls. His own voice sounded hollow and hypocritical and false, at least to his own ears. Patting her arm, he raised his eyes to the wall beside the fireplace; and the first thing he saw was the yellow broadsheet of one of his own plays, called Poisoner's Mistake.) ' Do you ?' persisted Lesley.

'My dear girl! Shoot at him deliberately? You'd never even met the old boy before, had you?'

'Never!' A film of tears came over her eyes.' I -1 didn't so much as hear his name, until afterwards. Somebody told me.'

He attempted a laugh.

'Then there's nothing to worry about, surely? Just forget it. By the way, what had he been saying to you ?'

Dick hadn't meant to ask this. He had sworn an oath to himself; he could have yelled with exasperation when the words slipped out. Some uncontrollable impulse pushed him and seized him and swept him along in spite of himself.

'But I told you!' replied Lesley. 'The usual thing about a happy life, and a little illness, and a letter arriving with some pleasant news - You do believe me ?'

'Of course.'

She moved back towards the sofa, and he followed. He would have liked to sit opposite her, to study her under the light, to get away from the disturbing nearness of her physical presence. But her eyes expected him to sit down beside her, and he did so.

Lesley stared at the carpet. Her hair fell a little forward, hiding the line of her cheek.

' If he does die, Dick, what will they do to me?'

' Nothing at all. It was an accident'

' I mean... will the police come and see me, or anything like that?'

The room was absolutely silent.

Dick stretched out his hand for the cigarette-box on the table behind the sofa. A puke shook in his arm, and he wondered if he could keep the hand from shaking. They seemed poised in an unreal void, of books and pictures and lamplight

'There'll have to be an inquest, I'm afraid.'

'You mean it'll be in the papers? Shall I have to give my name?'

' It's only a formality, Lesley - And why not ?'

'No reason! Only...' She peered round at him; evidently frightened, yet with a smile of wry wistfulness. 'Only, you see, all I know about such things is what you've taught me.'

' What I've taught you ?'

She nodded towards the ranks of books, riddled with their curious criminal histories like worms in apples, and at the garish pictures and playbills which had seemed such excellent fun when you dealt with crime on paper.

'You're awfully interested in such things.' She smiled. 'I hate death, but I think I'm interested too. It is fascinating, in a way. Hundreds of people, all with funny thoughts locked up inside them ...' Then Lesley said a