Charles Williams: Hell Hath No Fury

It was accidental death. The man had shot himself cleaning a gun, wasn’t it silly.

I never did know afterwards how I got back to the lot. All I can remember is sitting there at my desk trying to get my mind to accept the news that I had done it, that we were free of Sutton forever, and that the danger was all past. It was just too much for me to take in all at once. I’d been living with the danger and the suspense for so long I couldn’t readjust that quickly.

Suddenly, I had to tell Gloria. I wanted to call her on the phone. I’d been avoiding her because of the pressure I was under, and now I wanted to see her and start making up for it. Then I stopped. What was I going to tell her? Sutton was something we didn’t talk about. And certainly not over the phone. But I wanted to call her anyway, and make a date to see her that night. We could go on now. Everything would be just the way it had been before, and somehow we’d break down that wall that had grown up between us. Some way I could make her understand it didn’t matter. But I wouldn’t call her; she was just across the street, and I wanted to see her. I had started out the door when the phone rang.

“Mr. Madox?” the voice said when I picked up the receiver. It was Dolores Harshaw.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called before, but I’m sure you’ll understand. I wanted to thank you for the flowers and for being so kind, and all. It was very nice of all of you.” She paused. Now, what the hell, I thought. Why so goody-goody? There must be somebody in the room with her, one of the neighbors, or the maid.

“Why, that’s all right,” I said. “It was the least we could do.”

“Well, it was awful nice. But what I wanted to talk to you about was the business. I know you’ve been wonderful about it; what my plans were, I mean. Do you think you could come over tonight, say around seven, so we could discuss it, you and Miss Harper both, I mean?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell her. We were wondering about it, as a matter of fact, but we didn’t want to bother you. Are you planning to sell out? Is that it?”

“Oh, no. I guess from what the lawyers say it’ll take some time for the whole thing to be settled, but I wouldn’t sell out anyway. I think I should try to carry it on—for George’s sake, you know. And of course I’ll want you and Miss Harper to go right on the way you have been. I’m sure it couldn’t be in better hands.”

There must be a dozen people in the room, I thought. She hadn’t even thrown in a nasty dig at Gloria just for old times’ sake. Maybe she’d decided to become a social leader, and pull down the shades before she turned in with her boy friends. Well, I didn’t care a damn what she did, as long as she paid my salary.

After she had hung up I sat there a few minutes letting it soak in before I called Gloria. It was wonderful to tell her.

I picked her up that evening and we started over. I thought of how much it was like that other time, when Harshaw had asked us to come over. And afterwards we could go out to the river, as we had then, and I could take her face in my hands and kiss her and we could break through to each other again. We would start all over. The past was gone. Sutton didn’t matter any more. I could make her see that. I knew I could.

She broke in on my thoughts. “Harry,” she said, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’ve been trying to all week, but I want to tell you now.”

“We’ll go somewhere afterwards and talk,” I said. “Then you can tell me, if you think you have to.”

“Yes. I have to. It’s about Sutton.”

I stared ahead into the lights, trying to keep my face still. “Sutton’s dead. Nothing matters about him any more. Nothing at all. You believe me, don’t you, honey, that it doesn’t matter now?”

“This does, Harry. I’ve got to tell you. You see, I thought all week that he had gone away. Because— Well, you see, I gave him that five hundred dollars. After you told me not to. I took it out there and begged him to leave. So now it’s going to take us that much longer.”

I reached out and patted her hand. “It’s all right,” I said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

It was a strange thing for her to say, I thought. Why bring up that one part of the whole mess, if we were going to ignore it? I should have got it then, but I didn’t, for we were turning in the driveway and I didn’t think about it any more. I stopped by the side porch and we got out. The light was on and as we rang the bell and stood there waiting I looked at her, thinking how pretty she was. She had on a yellow summer dress with big fluffy bows or something on the shoulders, and her stockings were some dark shade. She seemed to like dark-colored nylons—

I was staring. I couldn’t say anything, and the skin on the back of my neck was tightening up into gooseflesh like frozen sandpaper. I got it now, when it was forever too late.

It was what she was wearing on her feet. They were wedgies. They were wedgies with grass straps.

21

Dolores Harshaw came to the door then and let us in. I was numb. I was operating on pure reflex, trying to keep going and cover up. Somewhere far off I could hear them giving it the how-nice-you-look and what-a-lovely-dress routine while the wreckage fell all around me and I could see what I had done. There was no escape. There wasn’t any way to go back, so all I could do was walk the rest of the way into it and pray. It was all dangerous now, and I knew it, but I wondered if she did. We were standing hip-deep in gunpowder and she might not have any more sense than to reach for a match. I’d killed Sutton, and she was the only one on earth who knew it. Did she realize what that meant? All the time I’d thought it was Gloria, and Gloria didn’t know anything. She was standing there in the magazine with us, and no matter what happened I had to be sure she was out before it blew up.

There was too much of it and it was coming at me too fast to see the whole picture at once. Crazy pieces of it kept flashing up in the sick confusion of my thoughts, and then they’d be gone and there’d be something else. There was Harshaw. I didn’t have to wonder any more why he’d had a heart attack and fallen down the stairs at a crazy hour like that. Had he just happened to catch her coming in at three in the morning barefoot and naked except for a dress half torn off by the underbrush and stuck to her with the rain, or had she done it deliberately? Nobody would ever know, and they couldn’t touch her. Maybe he had given her that bruise on the shoulder, or maybe she’d got it when she fell over us back there in the shack. But what difference did It make? She knew I’d killed Sutton and I had to shut her up, but how?

And now I knew why Sutton had waited all that time to put the squeeze on me. He hadn’t even been there at the fire; or at least he hadn’t seen me. She’d told him. When I’d given her the brush-off, she’d merely gone back to him, and because there wasn’t any other way to get even with me she’d told him the whole thing. And now he was dead because he thought he could cash in on it, and she knew I’d killed him, and why.

“Don’t you feel well, Mr. Madox?”

I tried to come out of it. She was looking at me with the dead-pan innocence of a baby. All the ash-blonde curls were burnished and glinting in the lamplight, and the shiny black dress looked as if it had been packed by hand. She was in deep mourning from the skin out and laughing inside like a cat up to its whiskers in cream. I’d given her the brush, and now she could hang me. All she had to do was pick up the phone and call the Sheriff.

Is she stupid, or what? I thought. Doesn’t she know I’ll kill her? But then I knew the answer to that, too. She wasn’t stupid. She’d asked Gloria to come, hadn’t she?