Charles Williams - Hell Hath No Fury

Because it made no difference at all now, I struck a match and looked around for the lamp. Then I remembered I’d broken it the last time I was out here, and was about to give up the idea when I suddenly saw it over on the kitchen table. He had bought a new one. I went over and lifted off the chimney and lighted it.

He hadn’t moved. He was lying on his back with nothing on but a pair of zebra-striped shorts, and he could have been merely asleep because he was snoring. He’d whipped me. He’d ruined me. And he was lying on the floor sleeping like a baby. All because his girl friend was running around out there somewhere in the rain and I couldn’t touch him.

Who was she? But what difference did it make? I jerked my head around and saw the wisp of pink tangled up with the kicked-back sheets on the bed and the shoes on the floor near the foot of it, and the purse lying open on the table. Well, I thought, she still has a dress to go home in, but it’s going to get a little wet—And then I stopped. The shoes. I swung back, staring.

They weren’t shoes; they were wedgies. They were wedgies with grass straps. I stood there raking my hand across my face. So I had thought I was free of her! The dirty, lousy, rotten, sneaking, useless, trouble-making little tramp! So now I could wear Sutton round my neck for the rest of my life knowing she was the one who’d saved him.

I was suddenly tired, and wanted to sit down. I pulled a chair up alongside the table and collapsed into it, groping wearily for a cigarette. We were finished. There was no hope now. And all because of that I cursed futilely, hopelessly, listening to the wild drumming of the rain. I lighted the cigarette after a while and leaned over from force of habit to put the match in an ash-tray. I didn’t see it there on the table, and idly caught hold of the purse to look behind it. It was open, and as it swung around I was looking into it. There was the usual hodge-podge of junk all mixed up in it, lipstick, comb, bobby pins and so on, but it was something shiny lying just behind it which caught my eye. Only a corner of it was sticking out in view. Hardly even knowing why I did it, I reached out and picked it up. I stared at it, blankly at first, and then unbelievingly, and at last with a cold and terrible deadliness that made the hair stand up along my neck. It was a money clasp, a silver money clasp in the shape of a dollar sign.

No! It was crazy. There must be more than one of them in the world. It was a coincidence. But even as I was telling myself it was, I knew it wasn’t. I was beginning to see it. I was remembering the day Spunky was lost and I’d carried her shoes back to leave them on the sand-bank for him, thinking at the time they were the same as Dolores Harshaw’s. Through the red mist in front of my eyes I could see it all now: the strange, unhappy way she’d acted tonight, the headache, wanting to go to bed early I cursed and jumped to my feet. His blue serge trousers were hanging on the wall. I grabbed them down, and rammed my hands into the pockets. There was nothing. I tried the overalls hanging beside them, without success. I looked wildly around. Maybe ... I lunged for the bed, stepping over him, and snatched up the pillow. The wallet was under it. I spread it open, and there it was, a thick sheaf of bills. My hands were shaking as I counted them. It came to a little over five hundred dollars.

So that was it. She had brought him the money he had asked for, but with that cynical brutality of his he wasn’t shaking her down for money aloneBut why had she done it? I knew her better than that. She would have let him kill her first. And then, slowly and quite terribly, it began to dawn on me. He had told her about me, and about the bank, when he went to see her yesterday morning. She had begged me to let her give him the money, and I wouldn’t. And even then, before I knew it myself, she was afraid I was going to kill him. She’d come out here and brought it, begging him to take it and go away. She hadn’t been trying to save herself. It was me she was thinking of.

I was as cold as ice all over, and I could hardly get my breath. I thought of her out there trying to find her way back to her car through the rain and darkness, half petrified with terror and running into trees, and barefoot. I got up slowly and took the little automatic out of my pocket and stood there looking at him. When his head turned a little and he tried to move I squatted down beside him.

“Wake up,” I said, my voice thick and unrecognizable. “Wake up and see what I’ve got for you.”

He stirred and tried to raise up. When he saw me his eyes went wide and he tried to slide backwards, away from me. I got him by the throat with my left hand and put my knee in his belly and grinned at him. His mouth opened, wider and wider as he tried to scream, but no sound came out of it. His eyes were terrible to look at, and I laughed at him.

“Don’t go away,” I said, and raised the gun a little and shot him just over the left eye.

When the sound of the shot had died away there was nothing but the rain. I stood there looking down at all that was left of Sutton, still holding the gun in my hand, and some of the crazy wildness began to drain away. She would know it now, I thought. That seemed to be the only thing my mind would take hold of in that first minute or two. I hadn’t wanted her to, but now she would.

I shook my head impatiently, trying to think. Why was I wasting time with some stupid thing like that? Sure, she’d know, but she was the only one. There wasn’t any witness. This wasn’t the way I’d planned to do it, but it was all right. It was all right if I got hold of myself and did something besides standing here the rest of the night muttering to myself.

I had to get started, and I had to work fast. There was a lot to be done, and time was running out on me. I looked swiftly around the room as my head began to clear, thinking of my original plan. I’d intended to use the shotgun on him to cover it up, setting it up to look like an accident while he was cleaning the gun. The shotgun was out now, but the idea was still good.

I grabbed his overalls off the wall and hauled at him until I got them on him. Then I put on his shoes and laced them up. I looked at him. A little blood had come out of the place where the bullet had gone in, but none of it had run on to the floor. It was on his face. I pulled a chair up by the table, hoisted him up, and shoved him into it, and then let him slump forward with his face on the table.

I was all right now. My head was clear and I was working very efficiently. He didn’t bother me. I didn’t have any feeling about him at all. I had other things to think about— such as fingerprints.

I grabbed one of his shirts off the wall and had just started to clean off the lamp where I’d carried it, when I heard the car. It was somewhere across the clearing. I heard it start up, the motor racing, and then it started up the hill. She had made it. She was all right. That worry was off my mind now. I finished cleaning the lamp, then rubbed the shirt along the table and chair and the other things I’d touched. I went over to the gun racks and lifted down the shotgun, using the shirt so I wouldn’t leave any prints on it. I worked the slide action until the magazine was emptied, picked the shells off the floor and placed them on the table, still being careful about touching anything with my bare fingers. Leaving the action open, I held it around to the light and looked down the barrel. It was clean. That was fine. I placed the gun across the table on his right, as if he’d just finished cleaning it and had started work on the little automatic when the accident happened. A man who has several guns never cleans and oils just one when he has the cleaning gear out. It would be like eating one peanut.