The Tunnel Read online

  “I do, I do, Mammy! And I furthermore promise and swear that I will never show disrespect to any woman, and always keeping the sanctity and purity of your precious body in mind, I will always respect my wife-even if it kills me! And dwelling forever on the virgin birth which you suffered through for me, I will never gratify her by taking her in joyous abandoned lust.”

  What million devils deep within her were driving her pen? She was writing her own despicable thoughts now, not Trevil’s. She had been conscious of her own body all that unhappy afternoon; unhappy because she feared the night, feared the punishment of being sent to bed naked and sanctified up in Trevil’s room. It must come out now. Her own body and its feelings had always been foremost in her mind.

  Be strong, Nat, and don’t stammer so! Go back firmly, and rip to pieces that prissy little girl. Those afternoons in bed had never been her father’s idea. She had planned them herself, and liked them, dramatic climaxes to her own well-thought-out provocations. How cleverly she had planned and worked to be sent to her mother’s room where she knew no nightgown could be found—a naked princess cowering between silken sheets waiting for some royal ravisher!

  Then, later, because her blandishments had failed, she resented Paul. Her skill had effect on Robert Helms, so she loved him most of all. But her skill was nothing against Trevil Sherrett’s love for his mother, which left no room for love for her. Their honeymoon was a trip upstairs, their nuptial night a travesty with the wasted form of Mrs. Sherrett sleeping between them instead of in the adjoining room.

  “You don’t mind, Nat, if we don’t go away, do you, darling? Mother’s far too ill to be left here alone, and you know how impossible it is to get trained nurses, or even servants, since the war.”

  “No, I don’t mind, Lord Fauntleroy. I married you because you’re such a perfect gentleman. Be considerate, and go downstairs and sit with your mother while I get undressed. I’ll hasten to cover my nasty nakedness with my new silk wedding gown. Why, even a travelling salesman is that much of a gentleman, leaving a strumpet in the room while he seeks the lobby and a fat cigar.”

  Well, if she was conscious of her body, certainly Trevil wasn’t. Bob would have had her stripped and taken months before the wedding, and no mother of his would have slept between them, nor would the stain of having had to make advances ever eaten into her soul. Bob had no cursed chivalry which a living woman, warm, pulsating and desirous, had to demean herself to break down.

  She was in bed waiting when Trevil knocked on the bedroom door. Where in the name of God had he been all his life? Was it possible he had really lived through the era of Flaming Youth and bootleg gin? What books had he read? Had he mingled with men in the Army and still escaped the facts of everything?

  Chesterfieldian was the word she thought of as he bent and kissed her, decorum stretched to the point of snapping. Miraculously he had transformed himself from an impeccable bridegroom in uniform to properly-expectant-husband in slippers, pajamas and dressing gown. Stage props furnished by mama. He looked so scrupulously washed and clean, each hair in place, his teeth well brushed. Perhaps he had even shaved again, for a touch of powder showed on his aquiline chin. The nails on his strong slender fingers were perfect. Oh, ecstasy! This wasn’t Trevil, the man she had married—this was a little boy, soaped and washed by his mother for Sunday School, his ears well cleaned and his virgin bottom powdered. Cleansed to the point of being sterile, he had received a pat on his dampened hair and been sent on in.

  He must have read something in her looks, for he asked her, “Are you feeling quite well, darling?” and his eyes reflected concern.

  “Terribly sleepy,” she said with a smile. She must blast his courteous perfection. Let him find out for himself how she felt. It wasn’t her role to initiate schoolboys and titillate their adolescent fancies. She wanted a man with nerve enough to begin.

  Trev switched off the light on the dressing table and left the bed light on. He carefully folded his dressing gown and hung it on the back of a chair. She was suddenly seized with a wild desire to prevent him from getting in beside her.

  “Would you think me very foolish,” she asked, “if I asked you to mix us a couple of very cold martinis?”

  “You couldn’t do anything foolish, Nat.” He stared for a moment, then gave her a grin.

  No woman could do anything foolish, she thought when he had gone downstairs. All women were perfect like his mother, deified, and free from original sin.

  He came back and sat on the edge of the bed while they drank the martinis. For once they failed her, building stalactites inside her, instead of fire.

  Perverse and cold, she asked for more. She would show him how pure a woman could be. When he finally reached across his mother and touched her breasts, she stiffened and said, “Do you mind? I’m tired.”

  “Of course you’re tired.” He took her gently in his arms. “There’s plenty of time. It was thoughtless of me. Good night, my dear.”

  There wasn’t really any time, except the present. She lay there, rigid, waiting for the midnight train to enter the tunnel. When it finally whistled, she had beaten herself by being clever as sin.

  Chapter 14

  Just how clever could she be?

  Somehow, they must have grown suspicious. The fact became quite obvious once she found the time and the strength and the inclination to sit at her desk and write it down. Yet it seemed quite incredible that Cam, for all his brilliance, or Trev, for all his closeness to her, could find sufficient powers of divination to fathom the innermost workings of her mind. Nevertheless, they had moved up into her bedroom. The chess table had been set up by the window and the never-ending game continued.

  A certain amount of confusion was engendered by the change of scene. Natalie lay in bed, propped up against the pillows, and watched. The whole thing was a farce. Sarah Olessa was wearing a dress of white and a foolish white cap with a border of black, an incongruous costume for a day when the orchard outside was blanketed under a foot of snow. Cam was chortling, as usual, over his ability to outmaneuver Trevil.

  Fire was crackling in the fireplace, and the radiator was whistling a lullaby under the pressure of upcoming steam. There were flowers on the table by the desk. They had been put there, no doubt, to distract her mind from any project of her own which might be important, Natalie decided. Another stage setting, well-planned and beautifully directed. She resented its perfection. Trevil had won over the Olessas with his blandishments. She had done nothing that could possibly frighten him, given not the slightest indication of her purpose, and yet somehow he must have divined the fact that she intended to kill him before he could poison her.

  It was this nasty faculty he had of being able to read her thoughts that made her afraid of him. She certainly knew that this was going on, this neat little conspiracy to make her think she was ill. Ill or well, any woman in her right mind could see with half an eye that Sarah, who for years had nursed only Cam, had made this sudden return to professional life with a purpose. Natalie Sherrett was about to be subjected, whether or no, to a strict disciplinary routine.

  Sarah put down her knitting and came to the bed.

  “I’m glad you’re awake. It’s time for your medicine.”

  Natalie didn’t say that she hadn’t been asleep. It suited her for the moment to play a part of acquiescence. She felt tired, too, as exhausted as the night she had sampled all the medicines and found out about Trev’s perfidy from Rags, the cat.

  She swallowed a capsule without protest.

  Sarah straightened the pillows and returned to her knitting, reminding Natalie of the French women who had sat so placidly at the foot of the guillotine.

  “This is a far, far better thing I do—”

  She had always admired Sidney Carton in The Tale of Two Cities, but thought he was a little foolish. She had no intention of giving up her life for anyone, not even Trev.

  He made a move, left the chess table, and came over to take her hand. She gave h
im a smile she considered guileless, and he asked her quite fatuously, “How do you feel?”

  “Oh,” she said with careless abandon, “I’m fine.”

  “You want something to eat?”

  “No.” She smiled again. “I think I’ll save it until we can go in town to Luigi’s together.”

  A fleeting shadow crossed his face. He tightened his clasp, and said, “That’s a deal.”

  Dr. Olessa said, “Quit making love. It’s your move, Trev.”

  Natalie watched him back to his chair. It would be a new experience not to have him around. Bob Helms had just vanished, swallowed up in the maw of a war. Trevil’s funeral should be as impressive as his mother’s, with two clergymen in smocks of black, and lace on their collars. An organ would play, and the church would be banked with flowers, giving off a cloying smell, like those on the table. Someone would sing, “Abide with Me.”

  It would be a relief not to have him around, constantly threatening. Of course, she would miss him in lots of ways. It was unusual to be the widow of Captain Robert Helms and not know exactly how a widow should feel. It might be different when Trevil was gone, but even that conjured up complications she had thought of. There had been too many pictures in the paper of women who had killed their husbands. Strange looking creatures, weeping in a witness box. She would have to be very careful. Being a widow was one thing, but she had no desire to test the pangs that a murderess might feel.

  Her own great cleverness suddenly overwhelmed her. The chessboard by the window grew. The pieces came to life, assuming personalities, some kindly, some malign. For just a second, Natalie Sherrett lost her own identity and became one with Alice, probing the depths of Wonderland, running to a point of exhaustion with the tireless Red Queen.

  “I am not a murderess!”

  She kept repeating the comforting assurance, whispering it silently as she ran.

  “I am not a murderess! I am only Trev’s opponent in a game of chess. ‘Off with his head!’ exclaimed the Queen.”

  Too bad he played so much better than she did. She must cheat in this battle of life and death; approach it systematically, calmly. When Trev lost, she must feel no more guilt for his death than she had for Bob’s when she opened the telegram on the train.

  There were others to be thought of, now; spectators to the game:

  Detectives.

  Police.

  Dr. Cameron Olessa.

  Sarah Olessa.

  Mona Desmé.

  A macabre guest list, indeed!

  Who investigated sudden deaths?

  Natalie fought to think, groping back through stories in the papers, culling items from half-forgotten mysteries. One simply didn’t associate with families involved in murders.

  There had been no investigations when Trev’s mother died, nor when Bob was killed by the train. Of course, Mrs. Sherrett had been ill for almost a year and the doctors had done everything that science could do.

  As to Bob—well, she might be wrong. People kept telling her that he had been killed overseas and that another officer was crushed by the train.

  She had read that in the papers. But Dr. Olessa had said himself that readers didn’t know what they were reading.

  Certainly it was foolish to feel guilty about the death of Mrs. Sherrett. Foolish? It was almost insane.

  Merely to wish sometimes that another person would hurry and die couldn’t make it happen, except, perhaps in Haiti, or Australia, or some country adept in the niceties of voodoo.

  She had been careful to be most solicitous of Trev’s mother, never startle her or argue with her. She had kept the house running smoothly while the queenly invalid upstairs was pulsed, thermometered, bathed, and fed, and dosed from the hundreds of bottles in the medicine cabinet.

  Dosed with the regularity of the trains! Everything must be on schedule. Once you’re late, there might be a wreck and someone might be killed!

  Really, there had been very little to do, what with the nurses, and what with the house going on like a machine, a machine that Mrs. Sherrett had set in motion years ago.

  Natalie’s efforts to take over had been no more than those of a child who asks to put the cake in the oven, not actually releasing her mother from work but making her stand idly and indulgently by to see that her daughter didn’t get her fingers burned.

  “I never,” Natalie said clearly, “went near the cabinet.”

  They didn’t look up from their game. Sarah went on clicking her needles. Either they hadn’t heard her or she hadn’t really said it. Or they were pretending they hadn’t heard her so she’d go on and give herself away some more. Had the firelight glittered for a moment on Cam’s glasses?

  “The liquor cabinet,” Natalie repeated firmly. But, of course, she had been stupid not to remember about the party. They had all had highballs last night, along with the deviled crabs; no wonder the bottle was almost empty.

  Trev said, “My knight takes your queen. Where’s my blind spot now, Cam?”

  “Sheer brilliance,” Cam answered. “Remember? I said you were only ten percent insane.”

  There was the clue. Trev’s blind spot would prevent him from guessing, would keep all of them in the dark, mercifully for her.

  She must plan it most scientifically. That was very clear. She lay back on her pillows and thought of all the ways to commit a murder. Simply, because they would catch her if she got in too far over her head. The best ways were always the simplest. The trouble with her own imagination was that it was inclined to be too complicated. She had read a mystery once in which the victim was killed by an icicle, but everybody else had probably read that one, too. Then someone had had an idea that if he filled the shower head with acid, the victim, who always took a cold shower in the morning, would.…

  Natalie almost laughed aloud. She could never rig up a thing like that, not in a million years. Then, too, anything along those lines was so obviously murder.

  I must be crazy, she thought, going on like this. And then, on the other hand, I must be sane or I couldn’t laugh at myself.

  Poison was supposed to be the “woman’s way.” And the poison was so conveniently to hand, just down the hall, tucked away in rows in the ancient bathroom. But what kind of poison was it? Unquestionably, if she cooked up a lovely stew for dinner tomorrow night and seasoned it from the garden of bathroom herbs, seasoned it generously, plentifully, and if Trev ate the stew with his usual appetite, the herbs would kill him.

  The police had chemists who would later take the stew apart, seasoning by seasoning, and could put names to the ingredients.

  There was always iodine.

  That was more like it. A bottle of iodine was kept in the kitchen, carefully marked, with a pin stuck into its cork so that no wandering hand could mistake it. But if somehow the iodine got into Trev’s coffee?

  And would it matter, after all, if they did catch her? If she confessed everything at the outset, expressed her willingness to die for Trev’s death, perhaps she might not have to go on trial at all. She would save the state the expense of a trial, and then she wouldn’t have to have her picture taken.

  Did she want to live so much? Or would she cling tenaciously to life once Trevil was gone?

  Never once after she had received the telegram from the War Department had she asked to die. Never once had she moaned in theatrical grief, “Oh, God, please let me perish!”

  Would a world without Trev be unthinkable?

  When she awoke, they were gone and the house was silent. They had tiptoed out, seeing her asleep, no doubt laughing to themselves as they closed her bedroom door. Someone had opened the window, so that in the moonlight the white ruffled curtains stirred faintly in the still breezes of winter. Someone had taken away the piled-up pillows behind her, leaving only one. Her bed jacket of pale blue chiffon lay neatly on the old-fashioned rocker. Someone had cared enough about her to do these things, to make her comfortable for the night.

  Why should Trev want to kill her?
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  Had he had a blind spot when he married her?

  Tears of self-pity welled into Natalie’s eyes. Why should she be forced to do this thing she didn’t want to do? She didn’t want Trev to die in agony before her, the hatred showing at last in his fading eyes. She didn’t want him to die at all.

  Would she have felt more like a widow if Bob had had the sort of funeral Trev would soon have? A really nice funeral, to set a period to his life, so that all might know he was dead and gone.

  Chapter 15

  When you read about your own great cleverness, and chess pieces coming to life and assuming personalities, and then paused long enough to realize that you had written this down as an accurate summation of your own thoughts, was it any wonder that at times those thoughts seemed slightly chaotic?

  Damn, damn, damn! You couldn’t read on with this foolishness—not and have to digest the fact that you had put it down yourself, and about yourself.

  Let’s be honest and get to the bottom of all this. Nobody’s ever going to see it. Well, she had to see it, and read it, and cogitate upon it which was exactly one person too many.

  For no reason at all, I have decided to kill my husband, except that I’m afraid of detectives, police, Dr. Cameron Olessa, Sarah Olessa, Mona Desmé, Trev’s dead mother, and myself. And this business about the iodine—that was a nice little item to have read in a courtroom some day, if she ever heard of one. Write many more things like that and the men in the square caps would come and take her away.

  The answer was perfectly clear: she didn’t need to write any more. She had never needed to write anything anyhow.

  Then what, in the name of common sense, was she writing for?

  Answer: because common sense must have ceased to exist along with a lot of other things such as happiness and personal security.

  She’d quit.

  Or would she?

  To write, or not to write, that was the question. All of her life she had wanted to write, but she had never written up until now. No small wonder when she had read this intricate collation of sickening balderdash, polluting the paper from the tip of her facile pen.