The Stratton Story Read online

  “When I first began to realise, there was nobody to whom I could go—except Julian’s father. He knew me. We had known one another for more than forty years. I felt that he was the only person in the world who would listen to me without fearing that my grief had upset the balance of my mind. But I could hear, as I tried to talk to him the first time, how unlikely, how melodramatic my words sounded. And the greatest horror of all was reading in his eyes the knowledge that when you become an old woman and have a reputation for eccentricity, even your best and oldest friends are prepared to believe that perhaps you’ve grown more than eccentric, that you’re becoming just a little crazy. I could sense, when he spoke, the worry behind his words.”

  “He was worried,” Julian said, “because he believed you.”

  “Right to the end, he couldn’t really bring himself to believe that somebody so close to Edward, to me, could prove . . . could prove so diabolically clever, could . . .” She stopped; she was breathing with difficulty. Julian’s father asked her if she would like to rest, and she shook her head.

  “Let me talk,” she begged. “Let me talk, at last, to people who know that what I’m saying is not the raving of a senile old woman. Let me talk. Let me tell you all, telling it all as clearly as I can, not keeping back anything in the fear of overtaxing your belief, of being warned about hysteria, of—”

  “I just asked you to rest,” Julian’s father said mildly. “Never for one moment, Blanche, did I ever really doubt—”

  “No.” She studied him for a few moments. “No, Walter, I don’t think you did. I should have remembered that you saw her, met her, perhaps measured her from the beginning better than I could. In the beginning, I was so eager to like her, to be liked by her. Edward’s marriage was perhaps a surprise, a shock, but when he brought her to see me, I couldn’t help seeing what had attracted him. I applauded his taste. She was so pretty, so quiet, so good to him ... I was grateful to her. All I hoped was that I could now and then see them, odd and peculiar though she might think me.

  “But I saw, almost at once, that I was to be kept away. The move down to Cornwall was surely made to get away from me—to get Edward away from me. I thought it was pure coincidence —and his wife’s illness—that took old Dr. Belldon down there, but of course it was her — Anita’s — doing.”

  “Are you saying,” Julian asked, “that even then she was planning to—”

  “Kill him? I think so. She had married once before, but she hadn’t been able to get control of her husband’s money. He—or he and she together—spent it. When she married for the second time, she was determined to see that she was not left again with nothing.

  “She had never met me, but Edward must have told her a good deal. I lived in the family home. I had most of the family possessions. Edward had a comfortable income, but my husband had left me a much larger one, and at my death, it would go to Edward. She must have longed to kill me—but she must have guessed that I would be hard to kill. So she remembered that I was old, and perhaps she would not have long to wait . . .

  “And then she realised that Edward’s delicate constitution was a fact, and not my fancy. It was not fuss, engendered by living with a cossetting sister; he was, in fact, a man who would have to have constant care. And when she knew that, she grew frightened. She began to plan. Not to kill him, perhaps; not then. She merely planned to get every penny he possessed into her own name. And so began the story of financial difficulties. So began the fiction of having to sell, and sell, to meet the expenses of constant illness. And I began to see that something was wrong, because when I paid them a visit at that time, I saw that she had begun to sell things of value.”

  “The miniatures?” Gail spoke for the first time.

  “No, not the miniatures. Not then. They were sold later—and in a way that told me that what until then I scarcely dared to put into words, was true.

  “They were beautiful, and very valuable. When she put them on the market, she took them, as she had taken other things, to an antique dealer. He happened to know me. He had thought nothing of the other sales—a pretty woman making a little money to cover this or that extravagance. But the miniatures were different. They were family things. They were painted of and for my family, and one of them was the pair to one in my own possession. She had asked him to sell them privately and quietly, but he felt so strongly about the matter that, privately and quietly, he came to me to suggest that I might care to become the quiet, private buyer.

  “I bought them. I have them today. I paid a magnificent price for them, first because they were worth it, and next because I saw a way of proving, for the first time, what I had only suspected before. I bought them at a very high figure — and after a time, I paid a visit to Cornwall.”

  There was a long silence. Mrs. Westerby was staring into the past, and they did not disturb her.

  “She said nothing whatsoever about the sale of the miniatures,” she went on slowly. “She told me nothing of any sales. She just told me that she was nursing Edward day and night, and that he was losing ground.

  “I asked her about money. There was not much, she said, but she and Edward preferred to manage on what there was; even if she could bring herself to accept money from me, she told me, it would be impossible to persuade Edward to agree.

  “And so much was true. When she took me in to see Edward, I read death on his face—but she sat beside him and held his hand, and spoke gently—oh, so gently—and smiled and explained that Blanche was anxious to help but they had decided—hadn’t they?—that being poor had no terrors for them. She said that being poor had—hadn’t it?—brought them closer to one another. She said most of it; all poor Edward added was that he wanted nothing for himself, only for Anita—and if Anita felt happier managing to make ends meet without help, even from me, there was no way of persuading her. Everything she said was agreed to or corroborated by him. He watched her with affection and with gratitude and with a sort of wonder that she should do so much, so uncomplainingly, for him.”

  Once more Mrs. Westerby stopped.

  “When she had all the money,” she went on quietly after a time, “she had nothing more to wait for. But one thing delayed her. She had written a book. The doctor said that putting it in the hands of the publishers was entirely his own doing, but if he had been questioned closely, I think it would have been found that she had given him the book and suggested the visit to London at the right moment.

  “The book was put into Christopher Beetham’s hands. And Anita waited. She had money, but not money she could use immediately after Edward’s death. She could not fall back on the fiction of his life insurance; a man as delicate as he had always been would have had difficulty in arranging a policy that brought in a very large sum. But if the book was accepted, she could, whether it met with small or great success, ascribe her sudden change of fortune to her writing. She had only to wait, and hope.

  “But no word came. She must have known that the book had power, but she could not guess how it would strike a reader. She waited, and no word came, and so she decided she would wait no longer. And so ... Edward died. Edward died. Edward . . . died . . .”

  Julian’s father put a hand on her shoulder.

  “No more, Blanche,” he said. “You must — ”

  “—forget?”

  “You must stop talking about it until — ”

  “ — until I can talk without feeling? Let me go on, Walter.”

  He removed his hand, but did not move from her side. “I knew,” she said, “when I heard of his death, that she had had a hand in it. But what could I hope to prove? How could I even hope to get a hearing from anybody? I could prove her a cheat and a liar, but beyond that, who would listen to me? Nobody. Dr. Belldon was an innocent accomplice; the cause of death was not a matter that had ever raised any questions. I was a jealous and possessive old woman and I had loved my brother and his death had sent me a little off my head—that would have been the reaction, at its kindest. If I spoke, I
labelled myself unbalanced—and there was still the small, faint chance, the small, faint hope that I was mistaken.

  “And then ... I read her book.

  “It was not written by a woman looking backwards. It was written by a woman looking into the future. The waste, the desert, wasn’t behind her, but before her . . . if she let herself accept life as it offered itself. Life with a sick man, life on a moderate income, or—even if there was money enough for the luxury she loved—the sick man still to care for. She was not looking back. She was looking forward to life as it might be—if she did not take her fate into her own hands. Every line in the book was her portrayal of her life and what it could become—if she let it. From each one of the failures she described in the book —lack of money, lack of opportunity, lack of friends, of luxury, of travel—from each one of these she was determined to save herself. She had once married for money—and the money had evaporated. She had chosen a second man with money—and had discovered that she had an invalid on her hands. She put down in her book her alternative to killing—a life spent in taking what fate handed out, without attempting to fight back.

  “I read the book, and then I was sure she had killed Edward. And I went to Julian’s father, and for the first time I heard myself saying, aloud, the terrible things I had suspected for so long. And he looked at me with fear in his eyes.”

  “Could you have expected me,” asked Walter Meredith, “to hear what you said—and not be afraid?”

  “You were afraid to believe me.”

  “I didn’t dare to disbelieve you. But to a man like myself, a man of my profession, you had to bring more proof than could be read between the lines of a book. When you spoke of cheating and lying, I knew that you could produce proof—but murder?”

  The word was spoken for the first time. It seemed to bring into the room all the horror of the past few hours. His face white, Julian stared at his father.

  “It was no less terrible to imagine it then, than to know it now,” Walter said. “I was frightened—for Blanche. She had no proof, and no hope of finding any. Everything would operate against her if she tried to bring her suspicions into the open. I feared the effect she would have on any member of the police—if she went to the police. I knew her and I could vouch for her intelligence and her sanity—but I could visualise their reactions when she put her suspicions before them—”

  “—and saw the object of them,” Mrs Westerby ended quietly. “That was the fact, above all others, that steadied me, that kept me from speaking to anybody but Walter. How could I hope to convince? How could I hope to sustain any accusation against her? I was old and odd; she was the very picture of womanly goodness and dutifulness and graciousness. What chance had I?

  “Only one.” She looked at Gail. “Only one —and Julian’s father will tell you how little, how very little, we trusted in its success.

  “I agreed to meet her at Chandon. And after that, all I hoped for was to trap her into self-betrayal. I knew that I could work on a side of her that was vulnerable—her hatred of me. I had, once or twice, by my blunderings, got past her guard. Once or twice, in the house in Cornwall, distress and a feeling of helplessness had perhaps made me go too far, had made me try to interfere too much, and I had seen the mask slip. It seemed to me that if only someone else could be there as witness; if only someone of undisputed authority, like Walter, could see for himself that she had another, a darker, a more dangerous side, they would believe the evil I imputed to her. I was no detective. I had no clues, no hope of finding any. I was helpless to act—except in this way. I could irritate her. I could anger her. I had irritated and angered her, in the past, to the point... almost to the point of making her lose her self-control. I wondered if I could do it again. I wondered if, given circumstances in which I could goad her, even perhaps humiliate her before others, I might crack the mask, destroy the smooth, smiling facade.

  “But Walter decided not to come with me.”

  “For many reasons,” Walter Meredith said, “the chief of which was that I was afraid of meeting someone who knew me in my official capacity. Any word of police or detectives would be enough to put her on her guard—even perhaps to warn her. I decided to ask Julian to come out with Blanche. He was as fond of her, he trusted her as much as I myself did. He would keep an eye on her if trouble developed—and we feared it would. Blanche hoped that opportunities might occur—”

  “I didn’t hope, Walter—I knew. I knew that if I could find out when her plane was due, I could arrange for Julian and myself to be in a place where we could follow, or wait for, Gail’s car. There would be no difficulty in that; the only difficulty would be getting at her when other people were present to watch us, to laugh at us. When I knew that Sir Hugo had travelled out with her, had shown enough interest in her to book a room for himself at the hotel here, I thanked God.”

  “What really happened at that cafe on the roadside, Blanche?” Julian asked.

  She sighed. “I think perhaps I was a little mad,” she said. “I knew Gail’s car could not be far behind, as I had given her details of the route she was to follow; I was hoping to delay so that she could catch us up. I had no more definite plan than to watch the road from the terrace and, with every appearance of surprise, hail Gail’s car as it passed. With anyone else beside her, Anita would have gone on; with Gail driving, I knew the car would stop. And so I left Julian and I walked towards the road . . .

  “And then I saw the workmen, and the arrow, and the notice. And again, I saw the hand of God. I draped my scarf round the notice and I turned the arrow round to point in the wrong direction. I saw Gail’s car, I saw the big car with the Americans, the small car with the Germans . . . and then Julian came towards me, and behind him were some workmen, and I knew that we had to get away at once, because the men would realise that something was wrong, and put it right again. So I hurried Julian to the car, and when he protested that the bypass was leading us nowhere, I told him that I knew the district and that we should shortly find ourselves on the main road again.

  “And so we stayed at the inn, and I said one more fervent prayer—that I would be able to goad Anita and drive her out of her corner and expose her to the kind of attention she could least bear: ridicule. She couldn’t get away; we were linked together by our relationship to Edward. She couldn’t escape, couldn’t detach herself, couldn’t repudiate me. I was a sight, a show, an intolerable nuisance to everybody, a laughing stock, a hideous embarrassment to her. And when at last I mentioned the miniatures, she could not fail to see that I was also a threat to everything she had taken so much trouble to plan, gone to so much risk to obtain. Before we left the inn—and certainly when Sir Hugo left the inn, driven away by me—I think she had begun to dream of disposing of me. And then ... I showed her how it could be accomplished with speed and safety. And so I led you all to the lake . . .”

  They could see it, calm and shimmering and deadly. They could see it, and they could see once again a slim body falling . . .

  “You all think,” came Mrs. Westerby’s slow, dragging voice, “you all think I wanted revenge. I didn’t want revenge. Edward died by her hand—a long drawn-out and terrible death. But revenge, I’ve always believed, is a kind of poison in itself. What would revenge have done for Edward? It wouldn’t bring him back. All I wanted was proof of her guilt. It sounds incredible now, but I think if she had confessed, on the lake path, what she had done, how she had done it, why she had done it. . . then I would have been at peace. I know that what I’m saying is stupid; crime is crime, and has to be punished—but I would like you to believe that from first to last I wasn’t thinking in terms of crime and punishment. What was she to me? My only thought was of my brother. He had died, and I was sure she had murdered him, and I was haunted by the feeling that even if he had loved her, even if he wanted her to go unpunished, it was terrible to leave him forever without doing anything to discover the truth about his death.”

  “Perhaps he did know the truth about his d
eath,” Walter suggested quietly.

  “No.” She swung round and spoke with utter conviction. “No. He knew nothing. You must remember that illness, for him, was almost a habit. He suspected nothing. I was the only one who suspected anything—too late to help him. As I saw it, I was bound to bring the truth to light—if I could. Not for revenge —just for the sake of truth. He died with only a lying, murderous woman at his side. He wouldn’t have wanted revenge, but I think he would have been glad to know that Walter and I had followed him beyond the grave, had cared enough to ... I can only tell you that now, for the first time since his death, I seem to be close to him. But I swear that I had no thought beyond the proving of my suspicions. I wanted her guilt established; that, for me, was to have been the end. I never once looked beyond.”

  She sat unmoving, her hands held loosely on her lap. She looked to Gail like a statue of age in defeat —age stripped of its last shreds of beauty or wisdom or vigour, and exposed in all its weakness and ugliness.

  She felt Mrs. Westerby take one of her hands and hold it.

  “You must go tomorrow, as you planned, Gail,” she said. “Early in the morning-you and Julian. You have told me nothing, but I know that he will never leave you again. This is no place for either of you. I am sorry that you saw so much. You will have to forgive me. I could have prevented your coming; Julian knows that I could have stopped you — but I didn’t want to. When I heard that it was in your car that Anita was coming here, I felt that I must meet you, see you, if possible give you a little glimpse of myself and my home. I wanted to have you ... I don’t say on my side, because I didn’t think of it in those terms. I was afraid of what you might hear about me from Anita. She wouldn’t, I knew, say anything definite, but she could have made you see me as a woman eccentric to the point of madness — a woman to be feared. I thought that if you met me, saw me in my own setting, realised that I was living a quiet and perhaps useful life, with friends round me who respected me, you would remember; later on, you might have the picture distorted a little, but you seemed to me intelligent enough, steady enough, balanced enough to preserve some kind of respect for me. And, thank God, you did. For I am certain that, but for you, she would have changed her mind about going to the cottage. I had mentioned the miniatures, and frightened her. She had two choices—to go back, or to go on. You made her go on.”