Malice Aforethought: The Story of a Commonplace Crime

PART I

CHAPTER I

1

IT WAS not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr. Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.

Naturally his decision did not arrive ready-made. It evolved gradually, the fruit of much wistful cogitation. And if cogitation, however wistfully nebulous, must have its starting-point, that of Dr. Bickleigh’s might be looked for in a certain tennis-party on a hot Saturday afternoon towards the end of June.

It was a party that the Bickleighs themselves were giving. Half Wyvern’s Cross was coming to it: all Wyvern’s Cross, in fact, that counted. Dr. Bickleigh, coming back to lunch only a few minutes short of two o’clock, tired after a long and strenuous morning’s round, found Fairlawn in a state of no little turmoil, and his wife impatiently waiting to get the dining-room cleared.

Really, Edmund, she greeted him, peering at him disapprovingly through the thick glasses she wore. Really, I think you might have been considerate enough to get back a little earlier to-day. How can Florence get on with the sandwiches if you keep her waiting to wash up your lunch things like this? When her husband was late, Mrs. Bickleigh invariably took her meals alone, at their correct times.

I’m sorry, Julia. I thought I’d better try to get through my list this morning, so as to be free this afternoon.

Well, of course. Mrs. Bickleigh contrived to reconcile the two apparently irreconcilable necessities by conveying her impression that her husband must have wilfully dawdled by the wayside.

Dr. Bickleigh poured himself out a glass of beer from the bottle by his plate, and carved some cold leg of lamb. He was too tired at the moment to attempt to extenuate himself further; besides, he knew it would be quite useless. He looked sadly at the joint in front of him. There was no knuckle left on it, and the knuckle was the only part he liked. Unfortunately, Julia liked it too.

He began to eat without enthusiasm.

Julia stood over him, sentinel-like. When he made as if to help himself to more beer, she interposed.

No, Edmund. One glass is quite enough for you on a day like this.

The hotter the day, the better the drink, my dear, suggested the doctor, but without very much hope.

Julia, who disapproved of facetiousness as much as she disapproved of most other things, only frowned. You have too much to do to sit here drinking. Besides, you know how beer makes you perspire. Do you want any more meat? Then you had better ring at once.

Dr. Bickleigh rose. He did not point out that, as Julia was standing already, she might perhaps ring the bell herself and save him the trouble. Julia would consider it middle-class manners to ring a bell herself when there was a man in the room to do it instead: and middle-class manners were to Julia what patent medicines were to himself—quite impossible.

Mrs. Bickleigh was eight years older than her husband— forty-five to his thirty-seven. She was also a good two inches taller, for Dr. Bickleigh was an unusually small man. A somewhat gaunt, erect woman, with frizzy dark hair and a thin-lipped mouth that twisted decidedly downwards at the corners, she had a quite unjoyful as well as a quite unlovely face; and she wore rimless pince-nez, not horn-rimmed spectacles, in front of her slightly prominent, pale-blue eyes. The two had been married ten years, and had no children.

When Florence had brought in the remains of a cold gooseberry-pie and departed again, Julia began to give her husband his instructions. You’d better put the net up first; it sags so during the first half-hour. The new balls are in the cupboard under the stairs; we’ll use them, of course, but you can give the old ones a rubbing on the hall mat as well. Then there are the two tables to be taken out, and the chairs, and I think we’ll have the bathing-tent up as well in this sun. Then you’ll have to—

I don’t think I shall be able to get all these things done, interrupted the doctor, with a doubtful air. I—

My dear Edmund, they’ve got to be done.

Yes, but I haven’t finished my round yet. Couldn’t get them all in this morning. There are two more visits I must make.

Julia frowned. Who?

Mrs. Parrot, and the Holne boy.

They’re not urgent.

Not urgent, no; but quite serious enough.

Not so serious as all that, pronounced Julia. They can wait perfectly well. You can see them after the people have gone.

But that won’t be till after surgery-time, in any case.

Then you’ll have to see them after surgery, said Julia calmly, knocking his evening meal, as it were, out of her husband’s mouth. Have you finished? No, you’ve no time for cheese. Hurry, please, Edmund.

Dr. Bickleigh reflected that at any rate there would be a good tea to-day. Well, well, it’s just as well we don’t give tennis-parties every day, he said amiably enough, as he massaged his neat little moustache with his napkin and pushed back his chair.

Feeling better for his hurried meal, he put on his hat and went into the garden.

The tennis-posts were of an antiquated pattern, and the handle most difficult to wind as the net began to tauten. Julia had been repeating for several years that they must get new ones next season, but somehow there never seemed to be quite enough money for such an article of sheer luxury; and in any case, as she did not have to wind the net up herself, the matter was not very important to her. The doctor had to lean the whole of his meagre eight-and-a-half stones on the handle for the last turn or two to get the net to the required height. That feat accomplished, he stood back and wiped his forehead. He was not in good condition, and the winding of a tennis-net can be a strenuous business. Then, as always after any physical exertion, he touched carefully the waxed tips of his moustache.

The guests had been asked for half-past three, and it was now already a quarter to the hour. Glancing guiltily at his watch, Dr. Bickleigh hurried up the little bank that bounded the tennis-court on the side nearest the house, turning up the sleeves of his buff-coloured cotton shirt (with two collars to match) as he went. His neat blue coat was already hanging on one of the tennis-posts. Dr. Bickleigh invariably wore a blue serge suit for his work. Country practitioners who made their rounds in old tweed coats and shapeless flannel trousers always seemed to him to be letting down the dignity of the profession. Even to wind up the net and bring out the chairs Dr. Bickleigh wore a spotless grey trilby hat, with a turned-up and corded brim—a hat to which an advertisement-writer could have applied no other word but natty.

As he brought out and set up the deck-chairs he tried to arrange in his mind the rest of his tasks in their best order. The bathing-tent had better go up next, for the day was a blazing one and complexions are important things even in the country. Then it would be useless to start with only six balls if Benjie Torr was in the first set, for that morose young man had a gloomily vigorous style, and it was uncanny how he seemed to land balls right in the middle of the almost impenetrable gooseberry plantation in the kitchen-garden. Then the two collapsible tables would need to be up and bearing their quotas of cigarettes, matches, and glasses before the first people arrived, for nothing looks so bad as to bring these things out haphazard afterwards. (Dr. Bickleigh was almost as particular as his wife about things being done in the right way when guests were about.) It seemed to him that everything was just as urgent as everything else.

He was struggling with the bathing-tent when Julia came out of the house and joined him. You’ve done the net, Edmund, she asserted; there was no need to ask, as the net was in position to answer for itself, but Mrs. Bickleigh never minded putting the obvious into words.

Dr. Bickleigh paused in his labours to agree that he had done the net.

It’s sagging already. You’d better tighten it up at once.

The doctor hurried over to the post and leaned on the handle. Julia was not satisfied till the net was raised a whole turn beyond what Dr. Bickleigh had secretly imagined to be the limit of his capacity.

Panting slightly, he rejoined her at the top of the bank.

Mrs. Bickleigh was surveying the rest of the court with a cold eye. The lines don’t look at all good. Did you tell Widdecombe to do them this morning?

I told him, distinctly. But you know what Widdecombe is, my dear.

I do, replied Julia grimly. He’s scamped them, as usual. On a Saturday afternoon Widdecombe was no longer available to repair his omissions of the morning.

Dr. Bickleigh scrutinised the lines with an earnest frown. I think he has done them, though. Yes, I’m sure he has.

Only once, if at all. Dear me, it’s a pity I can’t be in a dozen places at once, to see to everything myself. Her tone rebuked her husband for being out on his rounds and unable to supervise the malingering Widdecombe from there. Well, you’ll have to run over them again yourself, Edmund, as soon as you’ve finished the other things.

I’ll try, said Dr. Bickleigh, a little doubtfully, for he had been wondering whether he would be able to get everything else done in time.

Try? It must be done.

Well, if it must, it must, at once agreed the little man, with his habitual amiability. So I’d better get on with this confounded tent. It’s being more of a nuisance than ever, of course.

Mrs. Bickleigh, whose immediate tasks had apparently been disposed of, walked off with her usual purposeful air to the rose-garden. The morning paper was under her arm. It occurred to neither of them that she should relieve her husband’s congested time by doing the lines herself.

Before her marriage Mrs. Bickleigh had been a Crewstanton. She was, in everything but name, a Crewstanton still. She showed her husband so several times a day. During their short engagement she had informed her fiancé not once, but several times, with the air of one imparting interesting information, that her grandmother would have no more contemplated sitting down to a meal with her doctor than with her butler, and here was she, Julia, actually contemplating marrying one; it was really, Julia would point out with a short laugh, enough to make that grandmother turn in her grave; and Dr. Bickleigh agreed with her that it was. His wife had reminded him of this singular turn of fortune at frequent intervals ever since, and Dr. Bickleigh continued to express his sympathy for the feelings of the grandmother had she been alive to experience them.

For the Crewstantons, once one of the most important families in north Devonshire, had dwindled shockingly. Sir Charles, the twelfth baronet, had preferred to pay his crushing new taxes by selling piecemeal bits and slices of the wide Crewstanton lands instead of altering his way of living, and now inhabited with his other daughter a small villa on the outskirts of Torquay, where he was sinking angrily into the grave as fast as unlimited whiskey could help him—but not fast enough for his unmarried daughter.

The Crewstanton lands had gone. Three Crewstanton sons, who had been brought up with a valet apiece and unlimited small change, were vegetating miserably, one pretending to manage a banana estate in Jamaica, one making belief to be doing useful work in a surgical bandage firm in Derby, and one (the only one) putting his expensive education to good account by keeping himself in comparative comfort by his skill in bridge, billiards, and poker. Only the fourth, the youngest, had really made a success of his life; he had married a well-known actress, who was able to support him more or less in the style to which he had been accustomed.

Julia, offered the alternative of marriage with a man whom her grandmother could never have entertained at her own table, or joining her younger sister in the ménage at Torquay, then being seriously discussed as an impossible but inevitable future, had not hesitated for a moment.

Not that she had ever been grateful to Edmund. That she was thirty-five years old, had years ago parted with any hopes that she might ever have entertained of marriage, and possessed a face not unlike that of her own favourite horse (as her sister Hilda, a candid woman, immediately pointed out on learning of the engagement), weighed nothing against the fact that she was a Crewstanton. Julia had only one criterion, and that was birth. Any gratitude for the marriage—and how much gratitude was due perhaps only Julia could estimate—was owed by Edmund. And for the last ten years it was impossible to complain that Edmund had failed her in that respect.

2

THE BICKLEIGHS’ tennis-party was to be quite an important event for Wyvern’s Cross. In a community of not much more than a hundred souls the principal ones, the super-souls, are collected in a single gathering far less frequently than one might expect. Wyvern’s Cross called itself a village, but it was little more than a hamlet; and within a two-mile radius of the cross-roads in its centre there were not more than twenty people whom one (one being Mrs. Bickleigh) could possibly invite to a tennis-party at one’s house. On this occasion Mrs. Bickleigh invited them all. The Bickleighs had only one court, but out of those invited at least half did not play tennis at all. An invitation to tennis in rural England does not imply any ability to play the game; the dividing-line between those asked to tennis-parties and those not asked is a social, not an athletic one.

Naturally there was a reason for the unusual size of this particular party. One does not ask close on twenty people whom one does not like without a reason. The reason was a Miss Madeleine Cranmere. Miss Cranmere had just taken The Hall (bought it outright, in fact, as everyone for miles around knew), after the latter had lain vacant for something like five years, ever since Colonel Swincombe’s death and his daughter’s discovery that her father’s passion for rare bulbs had robbed her of the possibility of maintaining The Hall after he had left it. She had therefore retired to Brighton, where her feelings were unlikely to be harassed by the sight of a bulb again, and left The Hall to be let or sold. And now, after five whole years, Miss Madeleine Cranmere.

That was exciting enough in all conscience; but what made it almost unbearably more so was that Miss Cranmere was not only very rich, but not by any means ill-looking and quite young, and that she actually proposed to live at The Hall quite alone, without even a companion or an aunt. The Vicar, the Rev. Hessary Torr, was reputed to be distinctly concerned about it.

Miss Cranmere had been installed now for nearly a fortnight. Mrs. Bickleigh, as by right, had called at the earliest opportunity, and now she had organised this tennis-party to introduce the girl to such of her neighbours as she would be expected to know.

By a quarter to four the affair was in full progress.

The Torrs, as usual, had been the first to arrive. There were four Torrs—the Rev. Hessary and his wife, his daughter, Quarnian, and his son, Benjie. Where Mr. Torr led, Miss Wapsworthy and Miss Peavy were never far behind; they were the next arrivals. But neither played tennis, and the first set could not be arranged until the two young Ridgeways, Harford and his sister Ivy, made their appearance. Mrs. Bickleigh then deftly split the families (it was always Mrs. Bickleigh who arranged the sets at Fairlawn), and Quarnian Torr and Harford Ridgeway were sent to play Ivy Ridgeway and Benjie Torr. This set had been played at least fifty times before in Wyvern’s Cross, and all four players knew that the former pair would beat the latter by six games to two. They always did; but the inevitability never made the least difference to Benjie losing his temper about it in the fifth game.

Edmund, observed Mrs. Bickleigh, as the players strolled on to the court exchanging the stilted amiabilities of people who know each other exceedingly well meeting on a formal occasion. Edmund, I know Mrs. Torr wants to see the roses first of all.

Of course, beamed Dr. Bickleigh.

Of course, echoed Mrs. Torr, rather less enthusiastically. She had walked up from the Vicarage, and her shoes were new and tight. She would much rather have sat down and rested first.

You were telling me only the other day what a wonderful show you have this year, weren’t you? she hurried on, having intercepted a disapproving glance from her husband’s fish-like but expressive eye. Of course, she remembered now; Hessary had said he wanted a few words with Mrs. Bickleigh privately; this would be an excellent opportunity, before the others arrived. "Yes, I shall be most interested. You’ve got some quite new kinds this year, haven’t you, Dr. Bickleigh? Let me see—"

And perhaps you’d like to take the opportunity too, Miss Wapsworthy, while my husband is free to show them to you properly? Mrs. Bickleigh cut ruthlessly across Mrs. Torr’s garrulity. I know how interested you are. And you too, Miss Peavy.

Miss Wapsworthy, a tall, thin lady who wore a straw hat trimmed with very red roses on the extreme apex of her head, intimated that she would be glad to make use of such an opportunity, as indeed in social duty bound, though she somehow managed to preserve an air of her own independence in her agreement. Miss Peavy, on the other hand, was frankly intimidated, and looked it.

Very well, Edmund, said Mrs. Bickleigh, with finality.

The quartette moved off.

In the rose-garden the little doctor pointed out with pride his new Margaret McGredies and Mrs. van Rossems. Roses were his hobby, and his infectious enthusiasm triumphed over Mrs. Torr’s new shoes.

On the court, the third game being still in progress, Benjie Torr had not yet lost his temper. His lanky form, in interesting contrast to Harford Ridgeway’s solid stolidity on the other side of the net, was still twisting actively if ineffectually, and had not yet begun to droop in the bitterness of defeat. Nor had the errors of Ivy, who managed to combine on a tennis-court a most pleasingly artless grace of movement with complete ineptitude at the game itself, so that she was both a joy and a grief to watch, had time so far to produce their usual exasperating effect on him. Ivy, in consequence, was playing a good deal better than she would be towards the end of the set.

Seated in state under the umbrella-top of the bathing-tent, Mrs. Bickleigh and the Rev. Hessary Torr were discussing the subject on which he had desired the two minutes of Mrs. Bickleigh’s private conversation. Really, this young woman whom we are to meet this afternoon . . . chrrrm-hrrrm . . . Miss Cranmere . . . It must be nearly four o’clock already.

She’s unpardonably late, said Mrs. Bickleigh resentfully, though several others besides Miss Cranmere had not yet appeared. The only fresh arrival since the set had begun was young Denny Bourne, down from Oxford the day before and very correct in an old Etonian blazer and shining flannels, who was helping Dr. Bickleigh retrieve the balls which Benjie, growing more wild with every minute as the iron of defeat seared deeper into his soul, was now despatching into the gooseberry-bushes with the despondent regularity of a machine-gun.

One would really have thought on this occasion at least she would have taken the trouble to be punctual. Considering, added Mr. Torr’s tones, that she must have know that I was to be here.

You haven’t met her yet?

No, said Mr. Torr, in his gravest voice. I thought it better to give her a little more time to settle in before calling. He shook his massive head. But if rumour is correct, I fear—yes, I fear that she must be a very odd young woman.

She doesn’t appear to be related to the Hampshire Cranmeres, snapped Mrs. Bickleigh, as if that in itself were very odd. I’ve never heard of any others.

But Mr. Torr was not to be headed off the main track. "You really did gather that she intends to live at The Hall quite alone? Except, of course, for the servants. Yes, I feared so. A most equivocal position. Most equivocal. Chrrrm-hrrrm."

I agree with you, Mr. Torr. It’s not a thing one cares about at all, in this neighbourhood.

She is quite young, I understand?

Quite. She can’t be a day over twenty-two. I sounded her— tactfully, of course (I felt it my duty to all of us to do that much)—and I gathered that she has been an orphan for some years. Evidently she has just come into control of her own money, and it’s turned her head.

Very sad, clucked Mr. Torr. Ve-ry sad.

Someone will have to speak to her, pronounced Mrs. Bickleigh. Not obviously (there’s no need to be unkind; doubtless it’s nothing but thoughtlessness); but just to let her see what one feels.

Precisely. Mr. Torr seemed relieved. Precisely. That, in fact, is just what I had made up my mind must be done, Mrs. Bickleigh. I am delighted to hear you confirm it. The task is not one I should choose, but one has one’s responsibilities. In my position . . . chrrrm-hrrrm! Mr. Torr cleared his throat with grave and sober sonority, as befitted a man in his position.

But do you think it quite a man’s job? For once Mrs. Bickleigh did not seem so decided. Wouldn’t it be better if . . . ?

My wife, you mean? Mr. Torr’s tone was unflatteringly dubious.

Well, I had rather felt that the responsibility might, in a way, be considered mine. After all, one’s upbringing . . . I could hint it to her quite nicely, you see, but without nonsense. I remember that my grandmother once had occasion—Lady Denbury, I mean, not Lady Crewstanton . . .

Mrs. Bickleigh looked extremely serious. Mr. Torr looked extremely serious too. Their tongues worked busily.

The clacking of them reached Quarnian Torr on the tennis-court as she was about to serve in the final game. To her partner, as he supplied her with balls, she remarked: Daddy seems to have properly got off with that ghastly woman.

3

BEFORE MRS. Bickleigh and Mr. Torr could decide who was to voice their displeasure to the unconventional Miss Cranmere everything began to happen at once, as it always does after such peaceful interludes. The set came to an end; the two ladies whom Mrs. Torr had determinedly held in the rose-garden while her reverend lord had his private conversation were at last released, and streaked for the deck-chairs and the shade like two terriers let off the leash; Dennis Bourne and Dr. Bickleigh retrieved the last ball from the gooseberry-bushes and strolled back to the court; and Mr. Chatford arrived, a solicitor who practised in neighbouring Merchester but lived alone, a bachelor, in Wyvern’s Cross.

Well, how shall we play now? said Dr. Bickleigh, removing his hat for a moment to apply a handkerchief delicately to his brow, but still amiable even towards Benjie. Let’s see. Gwynyfryd hasn’t turned up yet, so it looks as if you, Quarnian, and Ivy, will have to play again. Miss Wapsworthy had passed the age when she could appear on a tennis-court; and, though Miss Peavy did not privately think that she had, it had been borne in upon her that others did.

Here come the Davys, said someone, as a couple came into sight round the angle of the house.

Come along, Mrs. Davy, called the doctor jovially, waving his racket. You’re just in time. We want you.

Then you can have a men’s four, said Mrs. Bickleigh, in her decisive tones, just as if her husband had not spoken at all. Mr. Davy and Dennis against Benjie and Harford.

Rather sit out, if don’t mind, mumbled Benjie sulkily. Can’t hit a ball to-day. Dr. Bickleigh play instead of me.

Nonsense, Benjie, retorted Mrs. Bickleigh, regardless of maternal feelings. You only played badly because you were losing.

You play, Benjie, my boy, Dr. Bickleigh smiled, clapping him on the back. Enjoy yourself while you’re young.

"I’d rather sit