The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories Page 4

  During the Second World War, he worked for the Special Operations Executive, and for dangerous missions he often recruited women, in the face of fierce opposition, because he reckoned that they had “a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men”. This belief may have led him to create Eve Gill, his most successful series character. Eve’s most memorable adventure was recorded in Man Running, a 1948 thriller which Hitchcock adapted a couple of years later as Stage Fright, with a cast including Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, and Richard Todd. Jepson was a talented, unpretentious storyteller, as ‘By the Sword’, one of his early stories, demonstrates; it appeared in Cassell’s Magazine in December 1930.

  Alfred Caithness stayed on for Christmas for two reasons, quite apart from the cold weather, which he found easier to support at Dingle House than alone in his Baker Street flat. Snow had fallen heavily in the middle of the month and again on Christmas Day. It lay thickly now, with the thermometer showing four degrees of frost, and it hid the lawns of the Dingle gardens and coated the roofs and gables of the old house like icing sugar on a cake.

  Although he told himself that the reasons he had stayed were because an old-fashioned Christmas appealed to him and also because his cousin Herbert would undoubtedly lend him two thousand pounds if he handled him right, there was another thing which kept him here.

  This, however, he had not yet fully admitted to himself. He only knew that he was in no great hurry to talk to Herbert about the money.

  Life was very pleasant at Dingle House, he reflected. Why go out of the way to speed one’s own departure?

  This morning he sat by the blazing logs in the great stone fireplace of the library and watched Barbara, who was his cousin’s wife, sewing at some pink thing which lay like a pool of silken foam in her lap.

  The boy, young Robert, who was five and a bit, was marching a regiment of tin soldiers up and down the low, broad window-sill behind her. Every now and then she would turn her head to smile at him and admire some new arrangement of their ranks. Lifeguards on horseback they were, with red coats and silver breast-plates, a gay and gallant company.

  “You couldn’t have given him anything he would have liked better, Alfred,” she said. “It’s the Caithness in him.”

  He nodded, but was more attentive to the graceful poise of her head on the white column of her neck.

  “He’ll be a soldier like the rest of them,” she added, and sighed.

  Her husband was not one, but only because his left leg was two inches shorter than his right, a childhood accident. Alfred, too, was an exception to the family tradition.

  “I never cottoned to the idea,” he remarked, following her thought, “but not because the old story frightened me.”

  “You mean that a Caithness always dies by the sword?”

  She had been thinking of it a moment before, when she had seen Robert grown to a man and pursuing the career which his ancestors had fulfilled so gloriously.

  “It’s very queer, though,” Alfred said, “how many of them have been killed that way.”

  He glanced at the crest carved in the limestone of the mantelpiece, a short sword gripped in a mailed hand.

  “But in these days soldiering isn’t so fashionable,” he added. “Perhaps your boy will be a legal luminary like his famous father.”

  His eyes went back to her, to the helmet of sleek, fair hair and the cream of her temples.

  Heaven! How sorry he was for her! Married to Herbert, who was twenty-eight years her senior. A lame, dry-voiced man, consciously enigmatical, proud of his keen logical brain, his freedom from sentiment and the cloying dangers of emotionalism. In other words, the Honourable Mr Justice Caithness, whose judgments in the criminal court were renowned for the clarity of their law and the severity of their consequences.

  Small wonder his life was so often threatened! To hear the smug self-righteousness of the man’s voice as he condemned some poor devil to penal servitude was enough to arouse any vengeance. If he had had one threatening letter since the last sessions, he must have had a dozen.

  Alfred shifted restlessly in his armchair and banged the dottle out of his pipe against the hearth.

  What joy could Barbara get out of a husband like that? Precious little. Where was he now, for that matter? Shut away in his study at the other end of the house with his dictionaries, encyclopædias, and books of reference, striving to solve Torquemada’s crossword puzzle by Wednesday night! That was his weekly excitement, his one relaxation from the administration of justice and the text-book, Anomalies in Criminal Law, which he was preparing with young Donaldson’s help. (At the thought of Jim Donaldson, Alfred frowned.)

  “Left—right—left—right—left!” sang Robert at the window.

  “Barbara!” said Alfred, and stopped abruptly.

  She looked up and then dropped her eyes quickly. He bit on the empty pipe.

  “They are horsemen, dear,” she explained, turning to the boy. “Only foot-soldiers march in step.”

  “These are diff’rent.”

  Alfred knew suddenly why he had stayed at Dingle House for Christmas. He went over to Robert and asked him to run along. The boy did not want to. A little disgruntled, he obeyed.

  “I’ll find the book of engines for Uncle Jim. An’ I’ll come back presently,” he said at the door.

  Alfred closed it on him and crossed to the chair in which the golden head was bent over the silk. She had not commented on his sending the child away and he took heart. Surely she guessed what was coming?

  “I’ve been here ten days now,” he said, searching for words, “and I’ve seen how things are—with you and Herbert.”

  “Alfred, please—”

  But he hurried on. He knew what he wanted to say.

  “You can’t go on with it! You can’t! You’re sacrificing your life to an existence in which there is nothing but the dry dust of—of senility to warm your heart. He married you when you were too young to know anything about life. I saw it—I knew you in those days, remember. Your self-seeking, ambitious mother pushed you into his arms when you were little more than a child, because he was a rich and eminent man. Barbara, you are miserably unhappy, tortured, tied to a complacent fossil of a human being who has no more idea of love than—than that piece of wood!”

  She had risen and was facing him with harassed eyes. He strode round the chair and tried to take her hands, but she snatched them behind her.

  “Look at it honestly, Barbara! You know I’m stating no more than the truth of the thing. I’ve got eyes in my head. I’ve seen you looking at him, heard your silence when he says something particularly inane. You’re rushing into disaster. Presently you’ll begin to look for an escape and, because the desire is so urgent, your judgment will be faulty. You’ll make a ghastly mistake. Some casual man will take advantage of your misery—”

  “Alfred, stop!”

  “I won’t stop. You’ve got to listen to me. I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you, in that church at Herbert’s side. Loved you, Barbara, d’you hear? I have the right to talk to you like this. I have the right to look after you—to take you away.”

  She stared at him with her hands to her cheeks, as though she could not believe what she heard. Dared not, Alfred thought with a throb of triumph. The words came easily now.

  “You must come away with me—you and the boy. You won’t have to give him up. I wouldn’t ask that. I can’t take you to a luxurious home but I can give you the warmer things of life, of the heart. Listen, Barbara. You know how I have felt about you for a long time. Last summer when I was here, do you remember the harvesting, when we rode home in the dusk on the top of that great mound of hay? You guessed then, didn’t you, my darling? I held back because I wasn’t sure of you, because I hadn’t realized quite how terribly unhappy you were. You put up a fine show and it deceived me. But this last week has been different.
You haven’t succeeded for a second in making me think you care at all for Herbert. How could you pretend? He—”

  She shivered and broke into the spate of his sentences with low, broken phrases.

  “Even if I don’t care for him—even if I don’t—does that give you the right to…? Alfred, he’s my husband—and your cousin. I—I am loyal to him and you must be.”

  “Heaven!” he cried. “What does he matter beside you? It’s your life—all the years of life and adventure and being—in front of you that count! Barbara!”

  He moved closer to her, with his arms open to take her.

  “You don’t understand—”

  Then the door-handle creaked and he stopped, drew away. Jim Donaldson came in, his broad figure filling the doorway and his wide-set blue eyes cheerfully alert.

  “Oh, hullo,” he said, and strolled into the room. If he saw Alfred’s scowl he ignored it. If he noticed the white, strained face of Barbara Caithness, he showed no sign.

  “Cigarettes about?” he asked and stretched his shoulders, for he had been writing solidly since ten. Alfred disliked him cordially. The crispness of his speech, the health and honesty of his eyes, were irritating. This was the sort of man he saw as a danger to Barbara, living under the same roof with her when she was in this state of mind.

  He saw the effort with which she picked up her sewing and made pretence of an easy mind. It was the gallant spirit he so admired in her, that, and all the perfection of form and feature which was hers. A woman in a million…his woman. Thank heaven he had had the courage to tell her so. It had startled her a bit but in a little she would see the thing more clearly. Damn this fellow Donaldson. Couldn’t the oaf see they were wanting to talk to one another? He watched him take possession of an armchair and thrust his feet toward the fire.

  “No sign of the thermometer letting up. But it’s going to stay bright, thank goodness.”

  But he wasn’t as dull as he seemed. Alfred saw his quick glance at the girl. She wasn’t giving anything away, though.

  Just as well, although the world would soon know about it. Herbert last of all—and not before they had gone. It would be a blow to the man’s pride, but undoubtedly good for him to discover a flaw in his omnipotence.

  Donaldson, who could not be told to “run along,” looked as though he proposed to sit there until lunch-time. Alfred searched for some excuse to get rid of him or a cue that would enable Barbara to come outside, but unsuccessfully.

  The boy returned at this point, burdened with a picture book and determined to engage Uncle Jim’s attention. The library seemed crowded and Alfred left it in ill-humour. He wanted to think. The situation had developed almost by itself. He did not find himself surprised now that it had come at last and he had put words to it, but he was aware of a kind of breathlessness. Emotion, of course, and largely a physical one. He was quite experienced enough to realize that.

  He went through the lounge toward the wide stairs.

  As his footsteps died away, Donaldson sat up straightly in his chair, all his carelessness gone. In its place was anxiety and concern.

  “It has come, has it?”

  “I’m frightened of him, Jim. I tried to stop him—”

  “—but he ranted on. I know. Oh, damn. Why didn’t I arrive a bit earlier? Had it been going on long?”

  Her distress cut his heart.

  “No. But he said dreadful things about—Herbert. He blamed him and—”

  “He would. He’s jealous, you see, of all that Herbert has which he hasn’t. Money—success—fame. That’s why he wants you. To have you, to steal you—make you follow him—would convince him of his own power. Power he knows in his heart of hearts, he can never achieve. But you needn’t worry. You mustn’t! Just yell for me if he starts again.”

  “It’s difficult, Jim. You see, he knows. I don’t mean about you and me, but about my not being happy.”

  He went to her and touched her hand, while Robert, realizing with the infallible instinct of his age that his elders were more interested in themselves than in him, went back to his Lifeguards on the window-sill.

  Donaldson spoke softly, with gentleness.

  “Was it only yesterday we discovered one another? I’m still a little dazed but I’m beginning to think straight. My dear, I shall have to tell Herbert, and go. It’s the only thing to do. I’ll tell him soon. To-morrow. I shan’t involve you. He’ll be fair. You know, sometimes I think he knows already—and understands. That he knew before I myself did. He’s odd in that way. More intuitive and sympathetic than people realize.”

  She nodded slowly, and her eyes shone mistily as she looked at him.

  “Beloved,” he said, “I shall carry you in my heart to the end of my days.”

  They lunched, the four of them, at the refectory table in the dining-room. A pewter bowl of holly in the middle partially hid husband and wife from one another, and Donaldson from Alfred. But Jim had no need to see Alfred’s face to sense his triumph. He realized that the man’s conceit, born of unconscious inferiority, would never permit him to see that Barbara, far from being pleased by his declaration, had indeed been nauseated and frightened by it.

  She had always vaguely despised Alfred, not necessarily because he seemed constitutionally unable to keep any job more than three months, but because it was never, by the remotest chance, his fault that he lost it. “I told ’em to go to blazes,” or: “I’ve got my principles and when a firm does that sort of thing—well, I leave them to it.” Then, complaining bitterly that the gods seemed to have picked on him as their perpetual scapegoat, he would “borrow” some more money from Herbert to carry on with until something turned up.

  Sometimes, too, he had said things about women, which in a queer way made one squirm. But for a certain charm, an indefinable quality, which made him an excellent companion when the mood was upon him, she could have hated him thoroughly. She was near to it now. He was complicating things for her at a difficult moment in her life. She was glad Jim was going to confess to Herbert. She would like to be there and face it with him. She loved, and was neither ashamed nor afraid. But Jim was right. He must leave her.

  Lunch came to an end and she went up to her room to lie down and escape Alfred. Jim set off for a tramp across the Downs, taking the spaniels. He wanted to think out the future and nerve himself for the ordeal of saying good-bye to Barbara. Life had got to be lived somehow. Whatever happened he must not be long alone with her.

  Alfred was also of a mind to consider the future and the practical aspect of the money shortage in view of his decision to take Barbara away now became very clear to him. He must settle it as soon as possible. With the thought of Barbara strengthening his resolve, he followed the limping Herbert from the lunch table to the study.

  His spirits were high and a feeling of invincibility stimulated him. Herbert would stump up like a gentleman. He was as certain of it as he had been of anything in his life.

  He accepted a cigar and hoped, he said, that he wasn’t in the way.

  “How’s the book going?”

  “Very well, Alfred. Donaldson’s help is invaluable. An exceedingly astute brain for such a young man. His knowledge of jurisprudence is remarkable. He’ll make a great name for himself when he begins practising in earnest. Like few men with large private incomes, he is ambitious. He will be Attorney-General before he has finished.”

  “Lucky devil,” Alfred commented. “I wish I had had a quarter of his chances. I’m only a couple of years older than he is and, if things had been a bit different—gone better for me—I would be doing as well. It’s not a comfortable feeling, that.”

  Herbert put on a pair of spectacles and turned over a page in a dictionary.

  “You indeed seem to have been unfortunate,” he said.

  Alfred nodded and glanced at his cousin. The keen, straight face was not unsympathetic. This seeme
d to be the moment.

  “I’ve been on the wrong tack, that’s the whole trouble,” he went on. ‘I’ve always been doing things for other people instead of for myself. Look at that Sugar Beet Exploitation business! Why, in six weeks I’d put the thing on its feet! I suppose I did more to start that company off than anybody else in it. It must have made a profit of a hundred thousand this year. You see if I’m not right when they publish the balance sheet next month! And I would have been on the board but for Murgatroyd. I made a friend of the man and he started some ridiculous gossip about a row I had had in Coventry with the Invicto crowd. He had got it all wrong, of course, but that didn’t prevent people listening to him. It got round to me in time, thank goodness. I called him a scandal-mongering liar to his face and walked out. They tried to get me back, of course, but I wouldn’t go.

  “No, the whole secret of it is that I ought to be my own boss. Herbert, I’ve got the idea of a lifetime. An export agency business. A one-man business. And with this new fiscal policy gaining ground all the time I’m on to a marvellous thing. New markets will be opening up every day and there’s scarcely a firm or organization in this country ready to put home manufacturers in touch with the fresh fields. I could do it and ship their stuff for them on a commission basis—quite a small one. There’s a fortune in it!”

  “It sounds quite an idea,” said Herbert.

  “Lord, I should think it is! But the devil of it is, it will cost money to get it going.”

  “These things do.”