Sparkling Cyanide Read online

  Recovering himself he said, ‘Why do you say that? However little our marriage means?’

  She looked at him steadily, her eyes wide and honest.

  ‘Isn’t it true?’

  ‘No, a thousand times no. Our marriage means everything to me.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I suppose it does—in a way. We’re a good team, Stephen. We pull together with a satisfactory result.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ He found his breath was coming unevenly. He took her hand in both of his, holding it very closely—‘Sandra, don’t you know that you mean all the world to me?’

  And suddenly she did know it. It was incredible—unforeseen, but it was so.

  She was in his arms and he was holding her close, kissing her, stammering out incoherent words.

  ‘Sandra—Sandra—darling. I love you…I’ve been so afraid—so afraid I’d lose you.’

  She heard herself saying:

  ‘Because of Rosemary?’

  ‘Yes.’ He let go of her, stepped back, his face was ludicrous in its dismay.

  ‘You knew—about Rosemary?’

  ‘Of course—all the time.’

  ‘And you understand?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, I don’t understand. I don’t think I ever should. You loved her?’

  ‘Not really. It was you I loved.’

  A surge of bitterness swept over her. She quoted: ‘From the first moment you saw me across the room? Don’t repeat that lie—for it was a lie!’

  He was not taken aback by that sudden attack. He seemed to consider her words thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, it was a lie—and yet in a queer way it wasn’t. I’m beginning to believe that it was true. Oh, try and understand, Sandra. You know the people who always have a noble and good reason to mask their meaner actions? The people who “have to be honest” when they want to be unkind, who “thought it their duty to repeat so and so,” who are such hypocrites to themselves that they go through to their life’s end convinced that every mean and beastly action was done in a spirit of unselfishness! Try and realize that the opposite of those people can exist too. People who are so cynical, so distrustful of themselves and of life that they only believe in their bad motives. You were the woman I needed. That, at least, is true. And I do honestly believe, now, looking back on it, that if it hadn’t been true, I should never have gone through with it.’

  She said bitterly:

  ‘You were not in love with me.’

  ‘No. I’d never been in love. I was a starved, sexless creature who prided himself—yes, I did—on the fastidious coldness of his nature! And then I did fall in love “across a room”—a silly violent puppy love. A thing like a midsummer thunderstorm, brief, unreal, quickly over.’ He added bitterly: ‘Indeed a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”’

  He paused, and then went on:

  ‘It was here, at Fairhaven, that I woke up and realized the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘The only thing in life that mattered to me was you—and keeping your love.’

  ‘If I had only known…’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought you were planning to go away with her.’

  ‘With Rosemary?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘That would indeed have been penal servitude for life!’

  ‘Didn’t she want you to go away with her?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Stephen drew a deep breath. They were back again. Facing once more that intangible menace. He said:

  ‘The Luxembourg happened.’

  They were both silent, seeing, they both knew, the same thing. The blue cyanosed face of a once lovely woman.

  Staring at a dead woman, and then—looking up to meet each other’s eyes…

  Stephen said:

  ‘Forget it, Sandra, for God’s sake, let us forget it!’

  ‘It’s no use forgetting. We’re not going to be allowed to forget.’

  There was a pause. Then Sandra said:

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘What you said just now. Face things—together. Go to this horrible party whatever the reason for it may be.’

  ‘You don’t believe what George Barton said about Iris?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘It could be true. But even if it is, it’s not the real reason.’

  ‘What do you think the real reason is?’

  ‘I don’t know, Stephen. But I’m afraid.’

  ‘Of George Barton?’

  ‘Yes, I think he—knows.’

  Stephen said sharply:

  ‘Knows what?’

  She turned her head slowly until her eyes met his.

  She said in a whisper:

  ‘We mustn’t be afraid. We must have courage—all the courage in the world. You’re going to be a great man, Stephen—a man the world needs—and nothing shall interfere with that. I’m your wife and I love you.’

  ‘What do you think this party is, Sandra?’

  ‘I think it’s a trap.’

  He said slowly, ‘And we walk into it?’

  ‘We can’t afford to show we know it’s a trap.’

  ‘No, that’s true.’

  Suddenly Sandra threw back her head and laughed. She said: ‘Do your worst, Rosemary. You won’t win.’

  He gripped her shoulder.

  ‘Be quiet, Sandra. Rosemary’s dead.’

  ‘Is she? Sometimes—she feels very much alive…’

  Chapter 3

  Halfway across the Park Iris said:

  ‘Do you mind if I don’t come back with you, George? I feel like a walk. I thought I’d go up over Friar’s Hill and come down through the wood. I’ve had an awful headache all day.’

  ‘My poor child. Do go. I won’t come with you—I’m expecting a fellow along some time this afternoon and I’m not quite sure when he’ll turn up.’

  ‘Right. Goodbye till tea-time.’

  She turned abruptly and made off at right angles to where a belt of larches showed on the hillside.

  When she came out on the brow of the hill she drew a deep breath. It was one of those close humid days common in October. A dank moisture coated the leaves of the trees and the grey cloud hung low overhead promising yet more rain shortly. There was not really much more air up here on the hill than there had been in the valley, but Iris felt nevertheless as though she could breathe more freely.

  She sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and stared down into the valley to where Little Priors nestled demurely in its wooded hollow. Farther to the left, Fairhaven Manor showed a glimpse of rose red on brick.

  Iris stared out sombrely over the landscape, her chin cupped in her hand.

  The slight rustle behind her was hardly louder than the drip of the leaves, but she turned her head sharply as the branches parted and Anthony Browne came through them.

  She cried half angrily: ‘Tony! Why do you always have to arrive like—like a demon in a pantomime?’

  Anthony dropped to the ground beside her. He took out his cigarette case, offered her one and when she shook her head took one himself and lighted it. Then inhaling the first puff he replied:

  ‘It’s because I’m what the papers call a Mystery Man. I like appearing from nowhere.’

  ‘How did you know where I was?’

  ‘An excellent pair of bird glasses. I heard you were lunching with the Farradays and spied on you from the hillside when you left.’

  ‘Why don’t you come to the house like an ordinary person?’

  ‘I’m not an ordinary person,’ said Anthony in a shocked tone. ‘I’m very extraordinary.’

  ‘I think you are.’

  He looked at her quickly. Then he said:

  ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No, of course not. At least—’

  She paused. Anthony said interrogatively:

  ‘At least?’

  Sh
e drew a deep breath.

  ‘I’m tired of being down here. I hate it. I want to go back to London.’

  ‘You’re going soon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘So this was a farewell party at the Farradays’?’

  ‘It wasn’t a party. Just them and one old cousin.’

  ‘Do you like the Farradays, Iris?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I do very much—although I shouldn’t say that because they’ve really been very nice to us.’

  ‘Do you think they like you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I think they hate us.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Oh, not the hatred—if true. I meant the use of the word “us”. My question referred to you personally.’

  ‘Oh, I see…I think they like me quite well in a negative sort of way. I think it’s us as a family living next door that they mind about. We weren’t particular friends of theirs—they were Rosemary’s friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anthony, ‘as you say they were Rosemary’s friends—not that I should imagine Sandra Farraday and Rosemary were ever bosom friends, eh?’

  ‘No,’ said Iris. She looked faintly apprehensive but Anthony smoked peacefully. Presently he said:

  ‘Do you know what strikes me most about the Farradays?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just that—that they are the Farradays. I always think of them like that—not as Stephen and Sandra, two individuals linked by the State and the Established Church—but as a definite dual entity—the Farradays. That is rarer than you would think. They are two people with a common aim, a common way of life, identical hopes and fears and beliefs. And the odd part of it is that they are actually very dissimilar in character. Stephen Farraday, I should say, is a man of very wide intellectual scope, extremely sensitive to outside opinion, horribly diffident about himself and somewhat lacking in moral courage. Sandra, on the other hand, has a narrow medieval mind, is capable of fanatical devotion, and is courageous to the point of recklessness.’

  ‘He always seems to me,’ said Iris, ‘rather pompous and stupid.’

  ‘He’s not at all stupid. He’s just one of the usual unhappy successes.’

  ‘Unhappy?’

  ‘Most successes are unhappy. That’s why they are successes—they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.’

  ‘What extraordinary ideas you have, Anthony.’

  ‘You’ll find they’re quite true if you only examine them. The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves that they don’t give a damn. Like me. They are also usually agreeable to get on with—again like me.’

  ‘You have a very good opinion of yourself.’

  ‘I am just drawing attention to my good points in case you mayn’t have noticed them.’

  Iris laughed. Her spirits had risen. The dull depression and fear had lifted from her mind. She glanced down at her watch.

  ‘Come home and have tea, and give a few more people the benefit of your unusually agreeable society.’

  Anthony shook his head.

  ‘Not today. I must be getting back.’

  Iris turned sharply on him.

  ‘Why will you never come to the house? There must be a reason.’

  Anthony shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Put it that I’m rather peculiar in my ideas of accepting hospitality. Your brother-in-law doesn’t like me—he’s made that quite clear.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother about George. If Aunt Lucilla and I ask you—she’s an old dear—you’d like her.’

  ‘I’m sure I should—but my objection holds.’

  ‘You used to come in Rosemary’s time.’

  ‘That,’ said Anthony, ‘was rather different.’

  A faint cold hand touched Iris’s heart. She said, ‘What made you come down here today? Had you business in this part of the world?’

  ‘Very important business—with you. I came here to ask you a question, Iris.’

  The cold hand vanished. Instead there came a faint flutter, that throb of excitement that women have known from time immemorial. And with it Iris’s face adopted that same look of blank inquiry that her great-grandmother might have worn prior to saying a few minutes later, ‘Oh, Mr X, this is so sudden!’

  ‘Yes?’ She turned that impossibly innocent face towards Anthony.

  He was looking at her, his eyes were grave, almost stern.

  ‘Answer me truthfully, Iris. This is my question. Do you trust me?’

  It took her aback. It was not what she had expected. He saw that.

  ‘You didn’t think that that was what I was going to say? But it is a very important question, Iris. The most important question in the world to me. I ask it again. Do you trust me?’

  She hesitated, a bare second, then she answered, her eyes falling: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’ll go on and ask you something else. Will you come up to London and marry me without telling anybody about it?’

  She stared.

  ‘But I couldn’t! I simply couldn’t.’

  ‘You couldn’t marry me?’

  ‘Not in that way.’

  ‘And yet you love me. You do love me, don’t you?’

  She heard herself saying:

  ‘Yes, I love you, Anthony.’

  ‘But you won’t come and marry me at the Church of Saint Elfrida, Bloomsbury, in the parish of which I have resided for some weeks and where I can consequently get married by licence at any time?’

  ‘How can I do a thing like that? George would be terribly hurt and Aunt Lucilla would never forgive me. And anyway I’m not of age. I’m only eighteen.’

  ‘You’d have to lie about your age. I don’t know what penalties I should incur for marrying a minor without her guardian’s consent. Who is your guardian, by the way?’

  ‘George. He’s my trustee as well.’

  ‘As I was saying, whatever penalties I incurred, they couldn’t unmarry us and that is really all I care about.’

  Iris shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be so unkind. And in any case, why? What’s the point of it?’

  Anthony said: ‘That’s why I asked you first if you could trust me. You’d have to take my reasons on trust. Let’s say that it is the simplest way. But never mind.’

  Iris said timidly:

  ‘If George only got to know you a little better. Come back now with me. It will be only he and Aunt Lucilla.’

  ‘Are you sure? I thought—’ he paused. ‘As I struck up the hill I saw a man going up your drive—and the funny thing is that I believe I recognized him as a man I’—he hesitated—‘had met.’

  ‘Of course—I forgot—George said he was expecting someone.’

  ‘The man I thought I saw was a man called Race—Colonel Race.’

  ‘Very likely,’ Iris agreed. ‘George does know a Colonel Race. He was coming to dinner on that night when Rosemary—’

  She stopped, her voice quivering. Anthony gripped her hand.

  ‘Don’t go on remembering it, darling. It was beastly, I know.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I can’t help it. Anthony—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did it ever occur to you—did you ever think—’ she found a difficulty in putting her meaning into words.

  ‘Did it ever strike you that—that Rosemary might not have committed suicide? That she might have been—killed?’

  ‘Good God, Iris, what put that idea into your head?’

  She did not reply—merely persisted: ‘That idea never occured to you?’

  ‘Certainly not. Of course Rosemary committed suicide.’

  Iris said nothing.

  ‘Who’s been suggesting these things to you?’

  For a moment she was tempted to tell him George’s incredible story, but she refrained. She said slowly:

  ‘It was just an idea.’

  �
�Forget it, darling idiot.’ He pulled her to her feet and kissed her cheek lightly. ‘Darling morbid idiot. Forget Rosemary. Only think of me.’

  Chapter 4

  Puffing at his pipe, Colonel Race looked speculatively at George Barton.

  He had known George Barton ever since the latter’s boyhood. Barton’s uncle had been a country neighbour of the Races. There was a difference of over twenty years between the two men. Race was over sixty, a tall, erect, military figure, with sunburnt face, closely cropped iron-grey hair, and shrewd dark eyes.

  There had never been any particular intimacy between the two men—but Barton remained to Race ‘young George’—one of the many vague figures associated with earlier days.

  He was thinking at this moment that he had really no idea what ‘young George’ was like. On the brief occasions when they had met in later years, they had found little in common. Race was an out-of-door man, essentially of the Empire-builder type—most of his life had been spent abroad. George was emphatically the city gentleman. Their interests were dissimilar and when they met it was to exchange rather lukewarm reminiscences of ‘the old days,’ after which an embarrassed silence was apt to occur. Colonel Race was not good at small talk and might indeed have posed as the model of a strong silent man so beloved by an earlier generation of novelists.

  Silent at this moment, he was wondering just why ‘young George’ had been so insistent on this meeting. Thinking, too, that there was some subtle change in the man since he had last seen him a year ago. George Barton had always struck him as the essence of stodginess—cautious, practical, unimaginative.

  There was, he thought, something very wrong with the fellow. Jumpy as a cat. He’d already re-lit his cigar three times—and that wasn’t like Barton at all.

  He took his pipe out of his mouth.

  ‘Well, young George, what’s the trouble?’

  ‘You’re right, Race, it is trouble. I want your advice badly—and your help.’

  The colonel nodded and waited.

  ‘Nearly a year ago you were coming to dine with us in London—at the Luxembourg. You had to go abroad at the last minute.’

  Again Race nodded.

  ‘South Africa.’

  ‘At that dinner party my wife died.’