Eight Murders In the Suburbs (18 page)

Hence, Raffen's left leg was artificial below the knee. In 1912, plastic surgery had not yet got into its stride. There was a two-inch scar on his left cheek, a lift on his lip which gave him a perpetual sneer; moreover, the left side of his face was paralysed and vaguely out of focus. The total effect was short of being repulsive—passing him in the street you would hardly have noticed him—but one kept one's idle glance away from his face.

After Raffen's convalescence, a strange friendship sprang up, intense on Grenwood's part. With something approaching condescension, Raffen accepted an invitation to spend part of the summer holidays in the house on the Sussex Downs where Grenwood lived with his father, his mother having died some years previously. After two more such visits, Raffen pleaded that he could not leave his mother so much alone. So Mrs. Raffen was invited, too, and accepted—largely out of compassion for the nervous unease of Rhode Grenwood. After the inquiry she had gone out of her way to emphasise that neither she nor her son held him in the remotest degree responsible.

At her second visit, Rhode subjected her—a widow—to an embarrassment of a nature that is astonishing when one remembers that he was then an intelligent undergraduate of nineteen. Gerald Raffen, as usual, had retired to the study after dinner to read. Rhode Grenwood joined the two elders in the drawing-room, and solemnly—and somewhat pompously—suggested that his father should propose marriage to Mrs. Raffen and that Mrs. Raffen should accept, as this would make it so much easier all round for him to keep an eye on Gerald.

Mrs. Raffen recovered more quickly than Grenwood senior.

“At his age, he thinks people of our age are so old that—that he doesn't even suspect that he might have made a fool of himself,” she said, when they were alone. “I'm worried about Rhode, Mr. Grenwood. He's hysterically determined to protect Gerald. And Gerald doesn't want an elder brother. Something will snap somewhere, and I'm afraid poor Rhode will be the one to suffer. I feel that something ought to be done.”

The necessity for doing anything was shortly removed by the Kaiser's war, which swept Rhode Grenwood into the Army. By the time the war was over both parents were dead.

Rhode Grenwood had no talent for soldiering. After six months of training he received a commission, by virtue of his civil education. He could manage the routine duties of junior officer but, like many another, he was secretly worried about his nerve. He was all right the first time he went into action. The second time, it was a very near thing indeed. In those days it was called ‘hesitation to obey an order in the presence of the enemy.' Before the papers came through he was in action again and was cited for gallantry—so that was that!

The citation brought him a Military Cross and he felt as if he had stolen it. That sort of thing pertained to ‘the boys of the bulldog breed,' to whose company he did not aspire to belong. He knew that, at the time, he had been wrestling with his own animal terror of an enemy he regarded as superior in all the relevant talents. His nerves had played tricks. A boyish voice, which he knew could not be in the trenches, was screaming his name: “Grenwood! Grenwood!
Grenwood!
“ He believed he had screamed too as he rushed at the German machine-gun post, to escape from the greater fear. And the men had rushed with him—which had turned the nightmare into a successful sortie.

As commonly happens in such cases, the whole history repeated itself some months later; only, instead of a short rush it was a five-hour job and he was awarded a D.S.O. During the five hours, whenever he began totting up the dangers, his nerves produced the impossible voice, with the same cry. He was physically exhausted when he got back to H.Q.: waves of dizziness assailed him while he was reporting to the major.

“You had twenty men with you, hadn't you, Grenwood?”

“Twenty! I tell you, I counted them as they came past me. How could I possibly hear a boy shouting my name—with the woodwork of the cubicles crackling like the devil!”

“Wrong war, old boy!” said the major. “Have a drink.”

Every week he wrote to Raffen, who-replied at long, irregular intervals. On his home leaves (96 hours beginning and ending at the railway terminus in London) he always sought him out. On one such leave he tracked him, with difficulty, to a cocktail party, where he met Jill Wensley, the grave-eyed daughter of a successful barrister, who had become a nurse. Besides the grave eyes, which looked as if she understood everything he wanted to say to her, she had the kind of voice he liked best and a physical beauty which, he assured himself, was far too individual to be defined.

Thereafter, he also wrote once a week to Jill; when time pressed, he began to write to her instead of to Raffen. Jill always wrote back. She told him, among other things, that Raffen and his mother had taken a house in the suburb of Rubington, where she also lived. This was good news, because Jill could keep him posted as to Raffen's movements, though, very soon, he was more interested in Jill's.

Jill, in fact, seemed to have pulled him out of his absorption. Jill and his own decorations, which he began to take seriously. The Army, after all, did not dish out decorations for nothing—the pose of the blushing hero who pretended it was all luck was being overworked. Why not admit to himself that he was—well, a brave man! By the time he was demobilised he had acquired a definitely appreciative view of his own character. In a sense, he had almost forgotten Raffen. He was in a great hurry to show himself to Jill in civil clothing.

When he called on Jill at her father's house, Raffen was with her in the drawing-room. Grenwood's memory had slurred the perpetual sneer, so that it seemed to have acquired a new sharpness. Raffen stayed for five minutes and then, pleading urgency, limped off. Jill was charming, but Grenwood was inexplicably deflated. Now and again, he glanced at himself in a mirror, groping for the reassurance of the ribbons that no longer decorated his chest. So he talked about mutual friends and left early.

It took him a week of muddled emotionalism to ask Jill to marry him. When she said she would, he very nearly cried with relief. Then he braced himself.

“I'm going straight round to collect Gerald's congratulations!”

“Well, don't look so fierce about it, darling, or you'll frighten the poor boy,” said Jill. And Jill laughed as she said it. An ordinary, happy sort of laugh.

It was not ferocity at all. Twice, during the ten minutes' walk to Raffen's house, he came near to bolting to the railway station. But he ploughed on, asking himself why he was making such a fuss about telling Gerald. It would not be startling news—only a friendly courtesy.

Raffen had qualified as a dentist. His artificial leg left him a normal ability to stand. He was assistant to a practitioner in Chelsea.

“You look thundering well pleased with yourself, Rhode old man!” he exclaimed—which made things no easier for Grenwood. Remarks like that were always difficult to interpret. One was likely to forget that the sneer was perpetual—and the poor chap's voice was always a bit raspy, even when he was not feeling waspish.

“Well, the fact is—that is, Jill and I—”

“Of course! But I had to wait until you'd said it. Thank God, there's still a bottle of old brandy in the sideboard!”

Coming from Raffen, it seemed a little too hearty to be true. But the strain eased with the aid of the old brandy. Raffen asked if they were to be married soon.

“As soon as we can fix things. I understand there's a sort of house shortage.”

“It's difficult to get a house within fifty miles of Town, but you needn't worry. This place has eight rooms and half an acre. I live in two rooms and never go in the garden. If you think it would suit you, you can have it at a valuation. In any case, I'm going to live over the shop. Talk it over with Jill.”

He talked it over with her a couple of hours later on the telephone. She seemed to hesitate at first and then agreed.

They were married within a month. When asked to be best man, Raffen propounded a dental conference in Scotland. After their honeymoon, they moved into the house that had been Raffen's. He did not come to the house warming. Later, he declined invitations to dinner, with appropriate excuses. On the death of his father, Grenwood had sold the house in Sussex. For a month in the summer they took a bungalow on the coast and asked Raffen for week-ends, but in vain. By Christmas, it had become obvious that he would accept no invitation.

Again Grenwood enjoyed a respite. It lasted for nearly three years of contentment and steady progress in all directions. In his eyes, Jill retained her beauty, adding a jolly comradeship. Once more he found himself able to take an appreciative view of his own character.

The respite ended one morning at breakfast. Jill was reading the paper.

“
Oh
—it's about Gerald!” she exclaimed. She read on. “Drunk and disorderly and using abusive language … in a public house in Theobald's Road.”

“Good Lord! That's a ghastly quarter at night—for a drink. Must have been some tomfool party going slumming—”

“No, it wasn't.” Jill's voice was sepulchral. “The magistrate makes an inane joke about raising the price to regular customers. ‘This time, Raffen, it will cost you five pounds.' Oh, Rhode, what had we better do?”

That, he thought, was an extraordinarily silly question. She was not often silly. Perhaps it was some trick of the light, but it almost looked as if she were putting on weight. She would lose her figure if she were not careful.

“I don't see that we can do anything,” he said. “I don't see how we come into it at all.”

“But we must! Getting tight is one thing. But in a pub! And that magistrate's beastly joke about regular customers!”

The regular customer joke was certainly an obstacle. Grenwood gathered his forces and rushed it.

“Probably the reporter muddled one case with another. Anyhow, there's no cause for anxiety. Gerald has his head screwed on the right way. In spite of his misfortune—poor chap!—but most of us have something to put up with—he's making out. He's gaining clinical experience with a well-established man. His mother left him enough to buy a decent practice when he's ready.”

In short, few men enjoyed so many guarantees of a successful and happy life as did Gerald Raffen. In the middle of it all, Grenwood lost his nerve and dried up.

“I'll have to start for the office now,” he said. “We'll talk about it tonight.”

He was not, he told himself during the day, Gerald Raffen's keeper. Gerald would justifiably resent any comment on his conduct as grossly impertinent. He would explain all that to Jill.

The explanation fell flat.

“I don't understand, dear!” she said patiently. “You used to be so concerned about him.”

“That was some time ago. In the interval—well, he's dropped us, don't you think?”

“You can't apply ordinary standards to Gerald. His disfigurement and his leg—that sort of thing throws a man out of the normal—especially with women. And I suppose he's made himself a social outcast and taken to drink and—the rest of it.”

He had the false impression that she was trying to make him angry and that somehow he had goaded her into it. It was self-hatred that stung him into asking:

“I say, Jill! Has Gerald some special significance for you?”

“That's rather a funny question for you to ask me, Rhode!” She paused but he made no use of it. “The answer is—yes-and-no. As you know, I saw a great deal of him while you were in the Army. I found his society very stimulating. With me, he unbent, and I did the same. That was obvious in my letters to you about him.”

“Were you about to tell me something that was not obvious?”

“I'm not in the confessional box, Rhode. I have nothing to confess to you, as my husband. Oh, dear, we're getting worked up, and it would have been so much better to keep everydayish!”

“No, no—we're not worked up!” It was not because he doubted her fidelity that he must hear all she could be induced to tell him … “Finish it, dear, now you've started.”

“A rather awful thing happened!” she said. “We were in the drawing-room. He was rambling—and he can ramble beautifully when he unbends. I had turned on the light and was drawing the blinds. He didn't do anything suddenly—it was all part of the ramble, in a way. He put his arms round me. He intended to kiss me and I intended to let him. And then—God forgive me!—the light was on his poor face and I—I shuddered. He must have felt me shudder. Wait a minute and I'll go on.

“He did not kiss me—how I wish he had! He put his head on my shoulder so that I couldn't see his face, and he said: ‘I was going to ask you to marry me, but I'm not, now. Goodbye, my darling.'

“He lit a cigarette and sat down, and we both chattered a little to restore our nerve. Then he said: ‘I think Rhode will turn up in a minute or two. I'll just stay until he comes, if I may.' I thought he was raving. But you did come—out of the war. You hadn't wired or anything, you know. I haven't seen Gerald since then.”

Grenwood remained silent. Gerald could have found out about his movements if he had made it his business to do so. That proposal had been timed. There was some kind of system in it.

“That he proposed to me—obliquely, anyhow—is of no importance. That I hurt a sensitive man's feelings is very important indeed. So you see, dear, when you ask whether he has any special significance for me, I think the answer must be—yes. You aren't upset, are you?”

“Not about your part in it, Jill!” He added sharply: “I'm not upset at all. Why should I be? I've not even any complaint against him. You and I were not engaged. He had a perfect right to try his luck.”

And Gerald Raffen had had no luck. Because he had lost a leg and his face was disfigured.