Henry and Dear Henrietta
“BACK TO the bedroom,” ordered Bony. “Have both window and door open for a fast getaway.”
The man on the porch-it could not possibly be a woman-again thudded a fist against the door, insistently, rudely. The sound was swallowed by the house, without echo, and in the ensuing silence the creak of the stair treads seemed almost as loud as the knocking. The hall light flashed up, and the stair door was opened.
Descending to the hall came Mrs Dalton. She walked slowly, and with something of the sleepwalker, to the front door. Deep within the passage Bony heard her release the chain and turn the key. On again seeing her, she was backing to the centre of the hall, and there said harshly:
“Come in.”
The door was shut and the key turned. A clergyman appeared, a tall man and stooping, with white hair and ragged beard. The hands clasping the round clerical hat were large and capable.
“Forgive me for calling at so late an hour,” he said mellifluously, as though the years of intoning Gregorian chants could not be put aside. The woman’s voice was icy.
“So considerate of you to telephone. Having watched you last night, I expected you to enter by a window.”
“It was my intention, but, Madame, I decided it would be undignified, and, ah, unoriginal, in view of my errand. I am happy to find you looking so well.”
“I cannot compliment you on your role. The hair-”
“Required only for street lights. Pardon me.”
The beard vanished. The white hair became grey and short. The figure gained in stature, lost its frailty. A handkerchief appeared, to be used as though to wipe the face of perspiration. The mopping done, the face was that in the Tuttaway file. The man stood as though awaiting applause, and said when Mrs Dalton was silent:
“Are you not going to invite me to your sitting-room? Perhaps a little refreshment? I am indeed your sorely tried brother.”
“State your business and go.”
“It demands time, dear Henrietta. One does not gulp good wine. Let us be comfortable, for there is much to discuss, to achieve the grand finale. Unless for the purpose of art, haste of movement and of speech, is unseemly. Therefore-lead on.”
The same mocking voice. The insolent bow. The old stagey artificiality. The woman’s breast rose and fell as though she had held her breathing. Her expression was of resignation as with a slight shrug she turned to the stairs. Her back was to the visitor, her face cold, remote, triumphant.
She went on and up, and Tuttaway followed, leaving the stair door open. Mrs Dalton told him to switch off the hall light and where to find the switch. Bony slipped into the darkened hall. He watched them mounting the stairs. Save for a room light, the upper floor was in darkness. Against this light, first one and then the other was sharply silhouetted. The carpeted landing muted their footsteps, and without sound they passed from Bony’s view. Then he heard their voices in the lighted room but could not distinguish the words.
He went up the stairs, to stand on the landing and within the deep shadows. In the lighted room the two were seated either side of a low hexagonal table bearing a bronze Eros, a silver box of cigarettes, and ash trays. Tuttaway occupied a straight-backed chair. His hands were interlocked and resting on his crossed legs.
Beyond Mrs Dalton was a settee, and on the settee lay an Elizabethan ruff, the gown worn by Marie Antoinette, and a navy-blue handbag having red drawstrings. To Tuttaway’s left was a fireplace, and on the hearth-rug lay five white cats.
“After all these years, dear Henrietta, I am so glad to see you,” boomed the Great Scarsby. “So many gales have howled across the Atlantic since we parted; so much has passed into the silence of time.”
“I am not glad to see you,” Mrs Dalton said tonelessly, and her following statement was made also without emotion. “I’ve disliked many men and hated but one. Such is my loathing and hatred of you that words to express it are not to be found in any language.”
“Hatred is warmer than love, my sweet,” Tuttaway chided. “Hate does endure. Believe me, I know. And waiting stokes the fires of hate. I know that too. I have waited so long.
“Since the moment I returned to the house in London and found you and dear Muriel absent, I have never doubted we would meet again. I was naturally grieved to discover you had deserted me, but heartbroken that Muriel had gone with you. You knew so well my hopes for her, my ambitions. Your plan was laid bare in that awful moment. You feigned illness when we were to embark for America, and you planned that Muriel should run away from me and slink back to London.”
The man appeared about to weep.
“All my affection for you, dear Henrietta, went for nothing, meant nothing to your callous heart. All my love for Muriel was scorned, mocked. That girl had great gifts, and despite her stubbornness I would have made her famous throughout the world. You were jealous. You stood between us. I took Muriel from the gutter to make her great, and you thought to hide her from me. How stupid! Of course you were always mad, and I should not have trusted you.”
“It is you, Henry, who have always been mad.”
“Poor Henrietta,” he drawled, his eyes like small agates. “The mad invariably consider themselves sane and all others mad. It is proof of your madness. When a child you were mad. Remember when you were in pigtails and I found you by the brook quite naked and with half a hundred worms in your hair? Had I not loved you, trusted you, protected you, you would have been certified like poorHetty.”
“I am not insane, Henry. I was born with a gift of humour. It was always you who couldn’t see a joke. See a joke! A calculating sadist is incapable of appreciating a joke. A sadist can only destroy and glory in destroying lovely things. You killed Muriel’s affection for you and in its place put fear. She was grateful to you for bringing her from that filthy tenement, for having her educated, for giving her ambition and dreams-and you killed her gratitude because you couldn’t possibly do else but kill it. She loved me, but you even killed that. And in the end you must kill her body.”
“Dear, dear! How melodramatic we are! Surely you will not accuse your own dear brother of murdering your cats?”
“Knowing you were going to enter this house, and with that foul purpose, I killed them that you should not torture them.”
“With what did you put them to sleep?”
“With a little something obtained from the wood merchant. An obliging man. There’s none left, so you won’t poison me.”
The man chuckled sonorously. He smiled, and without apparently looking at what he did he took a cigarette from the box, balanced it at the edge of the table, tapped the free end, and it fluttered to his lips. A hand went to a waist coat pocket and came away with an ignited match.
“Mad! Of course you’re mad, Henry. You raved even at Muriel. Slapping her face when she was tired. Tying her to a chair when she defied you, and making her watch you put her kitten into the stove and turn on the current, and laughing when she shrieked. You’ve always been mad: breaking little puppies’ legs to see them limp, tying cats together by the tails and putting them on a clothes line to watch them fight to death. You will not torture my cats.”
“I intended, dear Henrietta, to kill you mercifully. I will reconsider that. You knew, of course, it was I when the papers reported the glass dagger?”
“I knew you would come here, knew it the instant you escaped. Muriel wanted to go away, but stayed for my sake. I waited. For you!”
“A glass dagger!” Tuttaway chuckled. He plucked a crimson dagger from his hair and another of jade green from behind an ear. “Remember when I bought these in that singular curio shop in Milan? You wanted me to share them with you and Muriel, and I would not because they were so beautiful lying on white satin within the glass-domed case. But I did promise, remember, to share them one day. To give the blue one to Muriel and the green one to you. Muriel received hers.”
Mrs Dalton did not speak. She smiled.
“And presently you will receive yours.”
“You wouldn’t have the courage to plunge the red dagger into your own body Henry. I know that.”
“The red one! Ah, Henrietta, that is for the girl for whose sake I was martyred. She married and went to England, whither I go a few weeks hence.” The daggers vanished, and Tuttaway stubbed his cigarette and took another from the box. He stretched his legs and glanced about the room, nodded with satisfaction at something Bony could not see.
“I wasn’t so foolish as to bury all my treasures in one hole,” he said. “Much money, a few valuable diamonds, and the daggers I left in a safe-deposit vault, and some of my wardrobe and useful make-up boxes were hidden in a safe and secret place. I wasn’t then decided what to do about you and Muriel.
“A fellow sufferer from man’s inhumanity was to be released, and I arranged with him to purchase clothes for me-these same clothes-and hire a drive-yourself-car and be at a certain place on a certain date. It was quite easy. The car was stopped twice before we reached the city, and on both occasions the police apologised to ‘his reverence’. You see, they looked for a madman, and I’m not mad. I only needed a silly false beard and wig: merely reddened my face and expanded my cheeks with paper wads and used an Irish accent. Do I see beer on the cabinet?”
“I’ll get you a drink, Henry.”
“Pray do not trouble, dear Henrietta.”
The stilted manner in which these two talked, especially Tuttaway, verged on the ridiculous. Not for an instant did they cease to watch each other. After Tuttaway left his chair to cross to the cabinet, Mrs Dalton watched his every movement, and, from her attitude, Bony knew Tuttaway watched her.
On returning to his chair, he carried a bottle of beer under an arm, a tumbler in one hand, a bottle-opener between his teeth, and the green dagger in his other hand. He sat down before unloading.
“And then what did you do, Henry?” the woman asked.
“Sought you, of course. Found you had left Sydney for Broken Hill. Had I not been taken up with training that fool of a girl, I would have found you before you left Sydney. I was forced, therefore, to be cautious on coming here. Could not permit Muriel or you to hear I was making inquiries concerning you.
“What a large number of cats you have, dear Henrietta. Cats everywhere. So decorative, too. Mad! There is no doubt of it. I should have had you certified when you burned all my waistcoats. What a thing to do!”
The woman’s mouth writhed. Her voice was low, vibrant, passionate.
“Still the sloppy, slobbering, drooling beast. I would have burned your revolting body with the clothes had I known then what you did to Muriel-making her kiss the filthy tainted things when she taxed you with it. You broke her, didn’t you, Henry? Made yourself the great fear in her heart and mind, so that even my affection couldn’t help her. A hero to the rest of the company, you were a beastly, bloated swine to Muriel.”
The chuckle Tuttaway gave tautened Bony and sent ice up and down Jimmy’s back.
“You should have known I would catch up with her and you. I merely had to meet her one evening when she was walking home. By that time I knew her habits, where she lived, all about you. So we went walking in the gloaming, and I told her how sorry I was, how misunderstood. She forgave me, Henrietta. When I told her how you had always been queer, she-well, she believed it. I have not lost the art of being charming despite the infliction of man’s injustice. Those lies you told her, Henrietta. She remembered them. Then she said we were going the wrong way. She was strong. She always was.”
“And then you killed her?”
“Put her gently to sleep, my Henrietta. She felt nothing.”
Not for a second did his gaze leave her. She was breathing fast, and appeared gripped by terror of approaching death to be seen in his eyes and about his mouth. Drawing the tumbler to him, he took up the bottle and worked the opener with the hand steadying the bottle on the table. The beer frothed from the uncapped bottle, sprayed the cigarettes in the box, drenched Eros with white foam. He managed to fill the glass; the left hand gripped the haft of the green dagger.
He drank, and beer splashed over the clerical vest.
“You loathsome pig, Henry. Stop it! For heaven’s sake stop it!” Mrs Dalton’s voice rose to a shriek. “All my life-all my life I’ve had to look at that beastly habit.”
Came a mere flash of what was due.
“Your pardon, Henrietta. Careless of me…”
Tuttaway set down the half-empty glass, reached into a coat-tail pocket for a handkerchief, looked down at his vest to wipe away the liquid, and tucked a corner of the handkerchief behind the clerical collar. As he poured more beer into the glass, he leered at her.
“Well, my dear sister, I shall have to leave you,” Jade-green glass whirled about his hand like green mist. “I cannot face the thought that you will surely be put away if I do not negative the danger. In those places, you know, they do things to you. I shall be swift and gentle, for you are my sister and we did have fun.”
“You mustn’t be a fool, Henry.”
“Oh no! Indeed, no!”
“Surely you realise you are dead?”
“Am I, dear Henrietta?”
“Of course. You are only a ghost.”
The ghost smiled broadly. The chuckle came from deep within the ghostly belly. The ghost rose to its feet. The woman rose, too, as though her eyes impelled. Tuttaway laughed, snatched up the glass of beer, bowed to his sister. The dagger lay flat along the palm of his right hand.
Mrs Dalton’s face was ashen.
Bony motioned Jimmy to enter the room after him. The pair facing each other over the table might easily have seen them had not each been concentrating on keeping captive the eyes of the other.
“My aim shall be true. This ghostly hand will not fail.” The man’s voice deepened, became sonorous. “We are about to part, and I give you fond farewell. Here’s to the lass who was always loony. Here’s to the saint who murdered her cats between playing the role of this queen and that. Here’s to the idiot, her long life done, the years behind her and all their fun. Here’s-”
“Dear Henry! Have done and drink your toast. And please-please, dear Henry-don’t drool on to your waistcoat or Ishall go mad!”
Tuttaway roared with mirth. Bony watched the hand holding the dagger. Jimmy Nimmo stood just behind him. Mrs Dalton saw neither. She saw only George Henry Tuttaway, and Tuttaway saw only her.
“Madam, your very good health,” he shouted and drank. The hand bore the dagger aloft and back over the shoulder for the throw. Bony jumped, landing upon the table, then crashing full into the Great Scarsby. Mrs Dalton screamed:
“Leave him be! Look at him! He won’t believe he’s dead!”
Tuttaway gasped horribly. He gained his feet. The dagger slid from his hand to the floor. His teeth were bared in a dreadful grin as his body arched backward and his legs gave way. Mrs Dalton began to laugh-softly, gleefully, like a child.
When? How? The bottle had not previously been opened, for the contents had cascaded when inelegantly uncapped. Never once had the woman received the chance to pass her hand over bottle or glass. Tuttaway had watched her every movement, save that one second he had looked down upon his soiled vest. Bony had missed nothing, and yet…
Mrs Dalton’s laughter softened to a throaty purring.
“Get up, Henry, and be killed again. Don’t lie there like a numbskull. You must rise that I may kill you again. It’s the only joy you have given me. So clever, Henry, were you not? Clever! The Great Scarsby! The Great Mass of Rubbish! The great Simpleton! See, Henry? My little syringe fitted with the bulb from a baby’s dummy to give it greater force. Look, Henry! Get up and look. I’ll show you.”
She dashed beer into the glass and filled the syringe, oblivious of Bony and Jimmy, who stood at her side.
“The syringe is filled with liquid cyanide, dear Henry, and held crosswise in the palm of the hand. Can you see it? No. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye: you taught me that. You won’t arise? Well, then, take it lying on your dirty back.”
Both men were watching the woman’s right hand, and both thought they imagined the amber bullet which sped into the open mouth of the dead man.