Эрик Эмблер - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 42, May 1947

“She had an income in her own right and could have fixed it with a professional co-respondent for a tenner and a little bother. But what she did to me is worse than positive cruelty, which at least has the excuse of malice or perversion. I think of that woman as the lowest moral type — a moral slug.”

“You’re working yourself up, Harold. It’s bad for you, and it’s very distressing for me — ah, excuse me!”

There had come a knock on the private door — the knock for which Ledlaw had been waiting. Both glanced at the clock. It was twenty-two minutes to seven.

Henshawk went to the door. Ledlaw remained still, his back — as Superintendent Karslake had inferred — to both doors. He would let her get well into the room before he turned and faced her. And if she were not the woman, he would just acknowledge the introduction and go.

“I am in conference,” he heard Henshawk say.

Too late, Ledlaw turned round. Henshawk had stepped into the corridor and was speaking to her there. Ledlaw could see neither. He sprang up, intending to thrust himself into the corridor. But Henshawk had already returned alone and shut the door.

“Only an anxious client! Look here, I don’t want to turn you out, old man, but I must get some work ready for my secretary who will be back presently. What about dining with me at the club tomorrow night?”

Ledlaw saw that a simple bluff would give him the answer he must have.

“ ‘An anxious client’, you said, Albert. Why did you say it?”

“I don’t get you, old man.”

“Was it your wife, Albert? I ask, because I sent Mrs. Henshawk a wire in your name asking her to call here at six-thirty. I ’phoned it from the Redmoon — where you were lunching. She was a little late.” He paused, decided it was safe to add: “I saw her face, Albert. I must apologize for having called your wife a moral slug.”

Ledlaw got up, actually intending to go. The love of self-torture that accompanies such an obsession as his had something new to feed on. Fate had used him even more vilely than he had known, for Henshawk had been his friend since school days.

But Henshawk, the frank egotist who had delighted in making a statuette of himself, could not endure the loss of face.

“I am sorry you saw Valerie. It can only deepen the tragedy for all three of us. To know all, Harold, is to forgive all. I want you to sit down again and let me explain.”

“Go ahead.” Ledlaw dropped back into the client’s chair. “It might be amusing to hear why she smashed up my life to save herself a tenner. Why, surely, she could have got the tenner from you! And you’d have gladly taken all the bother off her hands.”

“I didn’t know what she was doing until she had done it,” Henshawk began. “And I didn’t know the man was you until you yourself told me. It all originated in my refusal to deceive her husband. I’m like that, as you know — I can’t bear anything underhand. Well, I went to Carmaen and asked him to divorce her and let us marry. If ever there was a dog-in-the-manger it was Carmaen. He refused. But, being a beast, he gave Valerie to understand that, if it was anybody but myself, he would gladly divorce her. I happened to mention that I had recommended that hotel when you had to run down to Frensmouth for the night, and Valerie ran down too — but without my knowledge.”

“But what about your knowledge when I showed you the writ and my defense? You didn’t believe that I had been her lover?”

“No, of course not! Naturally, I put it to Valerie. And she refused to budge an inch. Said it was entirely her affair, and that I could take what attitude I pleased. What could I do? Telling you about it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“Yet you married her! Built your marriage on the ruin of mine!”

“Ruin of my grandmother’s aunt!” exploded Henshawk. Both were standing, glaring at each other across the table. “Can’t you see you’re pulling your own leg? Ever asked yourself why Ruth didn’t believe you? Of course she believed you! Your marriage had crashed. D’you think I didn’t know that much? Ruth couldn’t stick you any longer, and she jumped at the chance of release which Valerie had given her.”

To Ledlaw the words brought horrifying self-suspicion, the glimpse of an utterly unbearable truth. As Henshawk turned his back, Ledlaw snatched up the object nearest his hand and struck. He struck at the image of a self-pitying poltroon, at himself posing and strutting for eighteen years in order to hide from himself the truth that his wife had been unable to endure his affection — that she had been driven to a mean escape.

But what he had actually done was to kill Henshawk.

Returning clarity brought, not remorse, but renewed self-pity.

“Just my luck! I lost my head for half a second and now I shall be hanged.”

Not death, but the dreadful ritual of trial and execution, awakened self-preservation. He remembered the danger of fingerprints. When he had washed his hands, he refilled the basin and put the statuette in it. With Henshawk’s sponge he wiped the ashtray and the arms of the chair.

“That secretary may have heard him blithering to me about the cottage. I shall be hanged! Steady! I shall just have to bet she didn’t hear — or that he hasn’t told anybody where it is.”

He stood over the model, wondering whether there would be any safety in smashing it.

“That damned cow!” Taut nerves and muscles suddenly relaxed, and he giggled like a schoolgirl. A moment later he had sobered and turned to the charcoal drawing on the wall.

“It looks more realistic without the hand. And the damned cow isn’t so pronounced.” About to pass on, he turned back on impulse, dipped his hands in the basin and removed the drawing from its frame.

“The outer office would be better — more people turn the handles.” With hands still wet he opened the communicating door. In the outer office he caught up a piece of tissue paper and wrapped it loosely round the drawing.

Downstairs the porter was loafing about the hall. If he were to try to slink past, the fellow might think he had stolen the drawing. What was the most ordinary and natural thing to do?

“Get me a taxi, please.”

In the taxi he checked his first impulse to leave the drawing under the mat. That drawing must be burned — the mill board was too stiff to be torn in small pieces. He re-wrapped it in the tissue paper.

At Westminster he traveled by Underground to Earl’s Court. He was staying at the Teneriffe Hotel, near the station. He emptied a dispatch case and put the drawing in it. He would take it out to the countryside and burn it tomorrow. He had the illusion of forgetting Henshawk and his own peril. Active thought was suspended. He dined in the hotel, and afterwards went back to the West End to a music hall.

The next morning the London editions carried the photograph of the model. When Ledlaw opened a paper over breakfast he instantly accepted failure.

With a certain coolness he worked out how arrest would come. Ruth would see the picture and the police appeal. As a respectable citizen, she would write to Scotland Yard. A detective would call, would learn from her that she had passed her childhood in the cottage, that her father had been compelled to sell it, that some years later, on her marriage, her husband had bought it and made it over to her, that they had lived in it for a short time. Then the divorce and his departure to Canada. They would hardly need to trace him through the bank. The shipping lists would show that he had arrived six days ago and put up at the Teneriffe Hotel.

At a guess, he would have about forty-eight hours — at worst, twenty-four, unless Ruth telephoned, which was improbable.