“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 March 1941, Page 10

“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of “Velvet and Steel,” “Christabel,” etc.)

CHAPTER V. (Continued). “Peter was a very ordinary young man, except that he was highly stiung and over-sensitive. He couldn’t hold a job down when he left school. He tried to paint, and he tried to write, but it didn’t seem to be much good. But by the time that he met you, Miss Lane, he had resigned himself to living the life he wanted without bothering making a show in the world. He had his cottage in the country, he had a girl, and he was very fond of her, I think.” Valerie burst out desperately: “I suppose you’re going to suggest that I took him away from her.”

“Well, didn’t you?” “I did not! Peter and I were only friends. Why should Ibe blamed because he got tired of her? Probably it would have happened in any case. I met her once; she was very nice, but she was dowdy and —and quite plain.”

“Plain,” Trench burst into a roar of laughter that contrasted startlingly with his subdued bitterness. The laugh ended as abruptly as it had begun. “She isn’t a raging beauty, if that’s what you mean,” he went on, and his eyes travelled over Valerie, seeming to strip away her loveliness to the bone. “If she was dowdy it was because she had to. work for her bread-and-butter —and sometimes went hungry at that. Perhaps you didn’t know that?” “No, I didn’t. But, in any case, why am I to blame?” Valerie managed to jay. “I never gave him the slightest reason to think that I felt anything but friendship for him.” “Quite. But you took good care that he should feel more than friendship for you.” She crimsoned. “You’re impertinent!” She rose breathlessly. “Haven’t we said enough? Is it any use your going into all this, Dr. Trench?” “Yes, I think so,” he said. “All you wanted of Peter was to be able to feed your vanity by dazzling him. But I expect you’re vaguely aware tliat if you hadn’t filled his head with stupid ideas of what he could do, and then laft him in the lurch when he failed, he’d be alive today. Probably you’re sorry about it. And you don’t like to think that people will say it was your fault. But after all you knew that it will only be added glamour to your reputation. You'll be the woman for whom the poet killed himself; and though you’re sorry now, in a month or two you’ll begin to relish it rather —!” , “How dare you say that?” Rage at his intolerable cruelty possessed her. Wildly she struck him across the mouth; but his smile stayed there unchanged. • She burst into tears, and sank down on the couch, bowing her head in her hands in a paroxysm of helpless weeping. In the midst of her turmoil of emotion she was conscious of a thread of surprise—that such a scene was possible between strangers! He looked at; her without the slightest compunction. “Crying won’t kill you!" he said. At last she raised her head, to gaze at him with b|’.te-jfilled, tear-glazed eyes, and stammer: “Will you please go?" “Yes.” He had already taken a step towards the door. His expression had changed, to one of grim weariness. “I wouldn’t have come here,” he said. “But I went into a picture theatre to try to take my mind off things this evening. There was a picture of you in the news-reel, meeting Captain Forrestier after his flight. You were laughing, and I couldn’t stand it.” A grim smile, a shrung, and: “Otherwise I wouldn’t have troubled you!” an'd he was at the door. “Please go,” said Valerie again, hysterically. He went. She heard the front door close as he let himself out. Rage, humiliation, everything was lost in a wave of grief —remorse, despair for the past which could not be altered.

“Oh, Peter —Peter!” She rocked to and fro, holding her head with her hands, repeating Peter’s name—as if he were the only person to whom she could call for comfort. A minute or two later Daisy Lismore, wondering why Valerie had been so long, came from the next room, and found her sitting upright on the couch, shrunk together like someone to whom the very air is pain, weeping desperately. “Why, Vai —my dear! What lias happened?" Vai shook her head, closed her streaming eyes, and covered her face with her hands. “Is that wretched Peter? I suppose you’re still worrying about him. Now, Vai, pull yourself together, darling!” But Valerie only cried. With an air of enormous importance Daisy Lismore tiptoed back into the bcudoir and with hushed urgings to silence swept the rest of Valerie’s guests out of the flat. She helped Valerie’s maid to put her to bed, suggested aspirin, bromide, and finally' called in a doctor to prescribe a sleeping draught. Next morning—for Valerie's distraction had got the better of her discretion and she had poured out her troubles to Daisy—Mrs. Lismore wrote a long letter to Dr. Trench at the East End Hospital, beginning: “Dear Dr. Trench. “I cannot imagine anything more brutal than your behaviour to my friend Valerie Lane, last night." But Dr. Trench did not reply. To an extent he regretted what he had done. It had been too personal and possibly undignified for his temperament. But after all, the young woman had had her revenge in smacking his face. He laughed at, half loathed the whole episode. It was unworthy of what he really felt about Peter. For that last reason most of all, he

regarded the episode as closed. He had no idea, then, that his behaviour would have a very deep effect. CHAPTER VI. Valerie fought against the truth of what Simon Trench had told her —but was forced to admit it in the end. She had thought of herself always as such a harmless person, because she had always skimmed over the surface of things, never going deep, never taking one pleasure in life at the expense of others. But Trench called that taking everying and giving nothing in return. Because it meant nothing to her when Peter looked at her with adoring eyes, and humbly thanked her for her visits to the cottage —and she had always been careful to take one or two other people with her so that the adoration wouldn’t become too direct —she had assumed that it meant as little to him. Or had she?

No, she had not even the excuse of thoughtfulness! She had known what it meant to him. She knew what their frustration meant to the many men who were attracted to her; it was all part of the exquisite flattery of their attentions!

At the same time, she really had thought of herself as a figure of grace dispensing happiness to everyone. What a delusion! And with nothing but vanity behind it —the same silly pleasure in being admired, and for what? What was there that she hadn’t acquired by the sheer luck of being born with plenty of money, and introduced into brilliant society when she was young? She had a pretty face and figure, but what had she done in all her- life but put expensive clothes on one and lake care of the other.

It had all been a bright dream of flattering illusions, in which she had thought herself remarkably clever. And now the dream was torn. A man was dead —and because of her. With her eyes forced upon she looked on the real world with all its bitter truths and stern responsibilities, a place of pitfalls and tragedies, in which it was difficult to see the way.

■When the wreath came that she had ordered, she dared not take it to Peter's grave herself. She wanted to. The sweet scent of violets and carnations filled the room, softening grief, consoling it . . She thought with horror' of the new earth piled on his poor ■hanged body, yet all she wanted was to throw herself down on it and beg him to forgive her. But she was afraid that that might the end she addressed the wreath to escape from her own sense of guilt. In the end she expressed the wreath to Culham, care of the Vicar. There was no way out for her through pathetic gestures. There was no way out for her at all, she could see no light, no means by which she cuold ever be at peace with herself again.

She could not raise Peter out of his grave, nor give him the happiness of which he had “never known an hour in his life.” She could not alter the hideous tragedy of his end. She could not cry herself into unconsciousness, nor pace'away her guilt as she paced away the hours in her room: she would not wake tomorrow and find it had been a bad dream. Alone, in the flat that evening, for she refused to see Daisy Lismore, or to speak to her father on the phone, she sat on the sofa, brooding dangerously, smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring at the wall . . . But then it seemed to her that that was a coward’s refuge, and that that was no way out for her either. She wondered bitterly what Simon Trench would have thought when he read of it in the paper in the morning, and then put the matter from tier mind. Her father rang her next morning, and asked her to go round to see him before he went out. His voice sounded somewhat anxious. Valerie said she would go, and found that Daisy Lismore had rung her father to say that something should be done about her, that she wasn't well, that she was worried about the Trench affair. “I understand that Dr. Trench came to see you,” said Sir George, noticing with dismay—for he was very busy and hadn’t time for worrying about such things—that Valerie’s face was white and drawn, and she had large dark rings round her eyes. “Yes." “Mrs. Lismore seemed to think he had upset you.” “I was rather upset that evening,” Valerie admitted. “She says—er—that he held you responsible for what young Trench did.” “I think he does.” She coloured deeply, and was stirred out of her listlessness to straighten herself in her chair. “Is that so?" Sir George looked worried, and then told her: “Well, if he annoys you—if you think he’s going to go about spreading libellous stories about you. I’ll send him a solicitor's letter warning him that we’ll sue him.” To his surprise Valerio burst out laughing. She shook her head with some sort of gesture of apology, and the tears started into her eyes as she calmed herself to speak. “He won’t go round spreading libellous stories.” “You don't think lie will?" “He isn’t that kind of man." And as she said it, Valerie wondered why should be so certain of it. But one knew instinctively that he wasn't that type. Anyhow, what did it matter? But her father looked relieved. (To be continued.)