Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Ruth Rendell A Drop Too Much

You won’t believe this, but last Monday I tried to kill my wile. Yes, my wife, Hedda. And what a loss that would have been to English letters! Am I sure I want to tell you about it? Well, you’re not likely to tell her, are you? You don’t know her. Besides, she wouldn’t believe you. She thinks I’m the self-appointed president of her fan club.

The fact is, I’m heartily glad the attempt failed. I don’t think I’ve got the stamina to stand up to a murder inquiry. I’d get flurried and confess the whole thing. (Yes, thanks, I will have another drink. My back’s killing me — I think I’ve slipped a disk.)

Hedda and I have been married for fifteen years, and I can’t complain she hasn’t kept me in the lap of luxury. Of course I’ve paid my own price for that. To a sensitive man like myself it is a little humiliating to be known as “Hedda Hardy’s husband.” And I don’t really care for her books. It’s one thing for a man to write stuff about soldiers of fortune and revolutions in South American republics and jet-set baccarat games and seductions on millionaires’ yachts, but you expect something a little more — well, delicate and sensitive from a woman. Awareness, you know, the psychological approach. I’ve often thought of what Jane Austen said about the way she wrote, on a little piece of ivory six inches wide. With Hedda it’s more a matter of bashing away at a great rock face with a chisel.

Still, she’s made a fortune out of it. And I will say for her, she’s generous. Not a settlement or a trust fund though, more’s the pity. And the property’s all in her name. There’s our place in Kensington — Hedda bought that just before house prices went sky-high — and the cottage in Minorca, and now we’ve got this farmhouse in Sussex. You didn’t know about that? Well, that’s crucial to the whole thing. That’s where I made my abortive murder attempt.

Hedda decided to buy it about six months ago. Funnily enough, it was the same week she hired Lindsay as her secretary. Of course she’s had secretaries before, must have had half a dozen, and they’ve all worshipped the ground she trod on. To put it fancifully, they helped fill my cup of humiliation. (And while on the subject of cups, old man, you may refill my glass. Thank you.)

I’ll tell you what I mean. They were all bitten by this Women’s Lib bug, so you can imagine they were falling about with glee to find a couple like us. And though I manage to be rather vague about my financial position with most of our friends, you can’t keep things like that dark from the girl who types the letters to your accountant, can you? The fact is, Hedda’s annual income tax alone amounts to — let me see — yes, almost six times my whole annual income.

Those secretaries were mistresses of the snide comment. What did you say? All right, I don’t mind admitting it; a couple of them were my mistresses too. I had to prove myself a man in some respects, didn’t I? But Lindsay — Lindsay’s different. For one thing, she’d actually heard of me.

When Hedda introduced us, Lindsay didn’t come out with that It-must-be-wonderful-to-be-married-to-such-a-famous-writer bit. She said, “You write that super column for Lady of Leisure, don’t you? I always read it. I’m crazy about gardening.”

My heart warmed to her at once, old man. And when Hedda had finished making poor sweet Lindsay type about twenty replies to her awful fan letters, we went out into the garden together. She’s really very knowledgeable. Imagine, she was living with her parents in some ghastly suburban hole and doing their whole garden single-handed. Mind you, though, it’s living in the suburbs that’s kept her so sweet and unspoiled.

Not that it was just that — I mean the gardening bit — that started our rapport. Lindsay is just about the most beautiful girl I ever saw. I adore those tall delicate blondes who look as if a puff of wind would blow them away. Hedda, of course, is handsome after a fashion. I daresay anyone would get a battered look churning out stuff about rapes and massacres year after year between breakfast and lunch.

The long and the short of it is that by the end of one week I was head over heels in love with Lindsay. And she feels the same about me. What did you say? You should be so lucky? I reckon I deserved every bit of luck I could get in those ruddy weeks while Hedda was buying the farmhouse.

Honestly, Hedda treats me the way some men treat their wives. Pours out all her troubles, and if I don’t grovel at her feet telling her how wonderful she is, she says I don’t know what it is to have responsibilites and that, anyway, I can’t be expected to understand business. And all this because the house agent didn’t phone her at the precise time he’d promised to and the seller got a bit uptight about the price. I don’t blame him, the way Hedda drives a hard bargain.

(Another Scotch? Oh, well, if you twist my arm.) Hedda got possession of the place in March and she had an army of decorators in, and this firm to do the carpets and that one to do the furnishings. Needless to say, I wasn’t consulted except about the furniture for what she calls my “den.” Really, she ought to remember it isn’t lap dogs who live in dens.

It’s an extraordinary thing how mean rich people can be. And quixotic. The thousands she spent on that wallpaper and those Wilton rugs, but when it came to the garden she decided I could see to all that on my own, if you please. Hedda really has no idea. Just because I happen to know the difference between a calceolaria and a cotoneaster and am able — expertly, if for once I may blow my own trumpet — to instruct stockbrokers’ wives in rose pruning, she thinks I enjoy nothing better than digging up half an acre of more or less solid chalk. However, when I said I’d need to hire a cultivator and get the Lord-knows-how-much top soil and turfs, she was quite amenable — for her — and said she’d pay.

“I don’t suppose it’ll come to more than a hundred or so, will it?” she said. “With the stock market the way it is, I don’t want to sell any more shares.” Just as if she was some poor little housewife having to draw it out of Post Office savings. And I knew for a fact — Lindsay had told me — she was getting £50.000 for her latest film rights.

She’d had the old stables at the end of the garden converted into a double garage. You can’t park on the road itself — there’s too much through traffic; but there’s a drive that leads down to the garage between the garden and a field. Not another house for miles, by the way. But the garden was a real wilderness and at that time you had to plow through brambles and giant weeds to get from the garage to the house. Taking care, I may add, not to fall down the well on the way. Oh, yes, there’s a well. Or there was.

“I suppose that’ll have to be filled in,” I said.

“Naturally,” said Hedda. “Or are you under the impression I’m the sort of lady who’d want to drop a coin down it and make a wish?”

I was going to retort that she’d never dropped a coin in her life without knowing she’d get a damn sight more than a wish for it, but she’d just bought me a new car so I held my tongue.

I decided the best thing would be to fill the well up with hardcore, concrete the top, and make a gravel path over it from the garage entrance to the back kitchen door. It wasn’t going to be a complicated job — just arduous — as the brickwork around the well lay about two inches below the level of the rest of the garden. The well itself was very deep, about forty feet, as I knew from measuring with a plumb line.

However, I postponed filling in the well for the time being. Hedda had gone off to the States on a lecture tour, leaving mountains of work for poor little Lindsay — a typescript to prepare about a million words long, and the Lord knows how many dreary letters to write to publishers and literary agents and all those people for whom the world is expected to stop when Hedda Hardy is out of the country.

Still, since Hedda had now established her base in Sussex and had all her paraphernalia there, Lindsay was down there too and we had quite a little honeymoon. I can’t begin to tell you what a marvel that girl is. What a wife she’ll make! — for some other lucky guy. I can only say that my wish was her command. And I didn’t even have to express my wish. A hint or even a glance was enough, and there was the drink I’d just begun to get wistful about, or a lovely hot bath running or a delicious snack on a tray placed right there in my lap.

It made a change for me, old man, the society of a really womanly old-fashioned woman. D’you know, one afternoon while I happened to be taking a little nap, she went all the way into Kingmarkham — that’s our neighboring town — to collect my car that had been serviced. I didn’t have to ask, just said something about being a bit weary. And when I woke up, there was my car tucked away in the garage, and Lindsay in a ravishing new dress tiptoeing about getting our tea so as not to disturb me.

But I mustn’t get sidetracked like this. Inevitably we began to talk of the future. Women, I’ve noticed, always do. A man is content to take the goods the gods provide and hope the consequences won’t be too difficult. It’s really quite off-putting the way women, when one has been to bed with them once or twice, always say, “What are we going to do about it?”

Mind you, in Lindsay’s case I felt differently. There’s no doubt, marriage or not, she’s the girl for me. I’m not used to a sweet naivete in the female sex — I thought it had died with the suffrage — and to hear the assumptions Lindsay made about my rights and my earning power et cetera really did something for my ego. To hear her talk — until I set her right you’d have thought I was the breadwinner and Hedda the minion. Well, you know what I mean. Unfortunate way of putting it.

We were bedding out plants one afternoon when Lindsay started discussing divorce.

“You’d divide your property, wouldn’t you?” she said. “I mean, split it down the middle. Or if you didn’t think that quite fair to her, she could keep this place and that sweet cottage in wherever-it-is, and we could have the Kensington house.”

“Fair to her?” I said. “My dear girl, I adore you, but you don’t know you’re born, do you? All these hereditaments or whatever the lawyers call them are hers. Hers, lovey, in her name.”

“Oh, I know that, darling,” she said. By the way, she really has the most gorgeous speaking voice. I can’t wait for you to meet her. “I know that. But when you read about divorce cases in the papers, the parties always have to divide the property. The judge makes a — a what’s-it.”

“An order,” I said. “But in those cases the money was earned by the husband. Haven’t you ever heard of the Married Women’s Property Act?”

“Sort of,” she said. “What is it?”

“I’ll tell you what it means,” I said. “It means that what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is her own. Or, to enlarge, if she fails to pay her income tax I’m liable, but if I fail to pay mine the government can’t get a bean out of her. And don’t make me laugh, sweetheart,” I said, warming to my theme, “but any idea you may have about a division of property — well, that’s a farce. There’s nothing in English law to make her maintain me. If we got divorced I’d be left with the clothes on my back and the pittance I get from Lady of Leisure.”

“Then what are we going to do about it?” she said.

What a question! But, to do her justice, she didn’t make any silly suggestions as to our living together in a furnished room. And she was even sweeter to me than before.

Of course she loves me, so she doesn’t feel it a hardship to run around laying out my clean clothes and emptying my ashtrays and fetching the car round to the front door for me when it’s raining. But I know she thought I’d have a shot at Hedda, ask her to let me go and make a settlement on me. I could picture Hedda’s face! Having a deeply rooted idea that she’s the most dynamic and sexy thing since Helen of Troy, my wife has never suspected any of my philanderings and she hasn’t an inkling of what’s in the wind between me and Lindsay.

The funny thing is, I had an idea that if I did tell her she’d just roar with laughter and then say something cutting about church mice and beggars who can’t be choosers. Hedda’s got a very nasty tongue. It’s been sharpened up by writing all that snappy dialogue, I suppose.

Anyway, when Hedda got back she wasn’t interested in me or Lindsay or all those petunias and antirrhinums we’d planted. The first thing she wanted to know was why I hadn’t filled in the well.

“All in good time,” I said. “It’s a matter of priorities. The well can get filled in anytime, but the only month to plant annuals is May.”

“I want the well filled in now,” said my wife. “I’m sick of looking at that disgusting heap of hardcore out there. If I’d wanted to look at rocks I’d have bought a house in the Alps.”

What I’d said about priorities wasn’t strictly true. (Thanks, I will have that topped up, if you don’t mind.) I didn’t want to fill in the well because I’d already started wondering if there was any possible way I could push Hedda down it. It had become a murder weapon, and to fill it up with hardcore now would be like dropping one’s only gun into the Thames off Westminster Bridge.

Hedda hadn’t made a will, but so what? As her widower, I’d get the lot. All through those hot weeks of summer while I stalled about the well, I kept thinking of Lindsay in a bikini on Hedda’s private beach in Minorca — only it would be my private beach — Lindsay entertaining guests in the drawing room in Kensington, Lindsay looking sweet among the herbaceous borders at the farm, my farm. And never a harsh word from her or a snide remark. I’d never again be made to feel that somehow I’d got an invisible apron on. Or be expected to — well, accede to distasteful demands when I had a headache or was feeling tired.

But how do you push an able-bodied woman of thirty-eight, five feet ten, a hundred and fifty-two pounds, down a well? Hedda’s an inch taller than I am and very strong. Bound to be, I suppose, with all the T-bone steaks she eats. Besides, she never goes into the garden except to walk across it from the garage to the back kitchen door when she’s put her Lincoln Continental away. I thought vaguely of getting her drunk and walking her out there in the dark. But Hedda doesn’t drink much and she can hold her liquor like a man.

So the upshot of all this thinking was — nothing. And at the beginning of this month Lindsay went off for her three-weeks’ holiday to her sister in Brighton. I’d no hope to give her. Not that she had a suspicion of what was going on in my mind. I wouldn’t have involved a sweet little innocent like her in what was, frankly, a sordid business.

As we kissed goodbye, she said, “Now\ remember, darling, you’re to be extra specially loving to Hedda and get her to settle a lump sum on you. Then afterwards, when it’s all signed, sealed, and settled, you can ask for a divorce.”

I couldn’t help smiling, though I felt nearer to tears. When you come across ingenuousness like that, it revives your faith in human nature. And when you come to think of it, old man, what an angel! There she was, prepared to endure agonies of jealousy thinking of me making love to Hedda, and all for my sake. I felt pretty low after she’d gone, stuck at the farm with Hedda moaning about not knowing how to get through all her work without a secretary.

However, a couple of days at bashing away on the typewriter with two fingers decided her. She couldn’t get a temporary typist down in Sussex, so she’d go back to Kensington and get a girl from the nearest agency. I wasn’t allowed to go with her.

She stuck her head out of the Lincoln’s window as she was going off up the drive and pointed to the heap of hardcore.

“Faith doesn’t move mountains,” she yelled. “The age of miracles is past. So let’s see some damned action!”

Charming. I went into the house and got myself a stiff drink. (Thanks, I don’t mind if I do.) It was fair enough being alone at the farm, though painful in a way after having been alone there with Lindsay. A couple of postcards came from Lindsay — addressed to us both for safety’s sake — and then, by a bit of luck, she phoned. Of course, I told her I was going to be alone for the next three weeks, and after that she phoned every night.

Remember how marvelous the weather was last week and the week before? Not too hot, but ideal for a spot of heavy engineering in the open air. I was just resigning myself to the fact that I couldn’t put off filling in the well a day longer when I got this brilliant idea.

Oddly enough, it was television that inspired me. Hedda doesn’t care for watching television, though we’ve got two big color sets which she says, if you please, she bought for my benefit. I hardly think it becomes her to turn up her nose at the medium, considering what a packet she’s made out of getting serials on it.

Be that as it may, I don’t much enjoy watching it with her supercilious eye on me, but I’m not averse to a little discriminating viewing while she’s away. It must have been the Friday night I saw this old Hollywood film about some sort of romantic goings-on in the jungle. Dorothy Lamour, I think it was, and Johnny Weissmuller — it was that old. But the point was, there was a bit of wild animal trapping in it, and the way the intrepid hunter caught this puma thing was by digging a trough right on the path the hapless beast frequented and covering it up rather cunningly with branches and leaves.

It struck me all of a heap, I don’t mind telling you. The occasion called for opening a bottle of Hedda’s Southern Comfort. In the morning, a wee bit the worse for wear, I spied out the land. First of all I needed a good big sheet of horticultural polythene, but we’d already got plenty of that for the cloches in which I was going to have a stab at growing melons. Next the turfs. I drove over to Kingsmarkham and ordered turfs and the best quality gravel. The lot was delivered on Monday.

By that time I’d got all the surrounding ground leveled and raked over, smooth as a beach after the tide’s gone out. The worst part was getting rid of the hardcore. Hedda was damned right about faith not moving mountains. It took me days. I had to pick up every chunk by hand, load it onto my wheelbarrow, and cart it about a hundred yards to the only place where it could be reasonably well concealed, in a sort of ditch between the greenhouse and the boundary wall. Must have been Thursday afternoon before I got it done to my satisfaction. I remember reading somewhere that the human hand is a precision instrument that some people use as a bludgeon. I wish I could use my hands as bludgeons. By the time I was done, they looked as if they’d been through mincing machines.

I waited till nightfall — not that it mattered, as there wasn’t an observer for miles, apart from a few owls and so on — and then I spread the polythene over the mouth of the well, weighting it down not too firmly at the edges with battens. The lot was then covered with a thin layer of earth so that all you could see was smoothly raked soil, bounded by the house terrace, the really lovely borders of annuals that Lindsay and I had planted, and the garage at the far end.

I was pretty thankful I’d got those turfs and that gravel well in advance, I can tell you, because the next day when I went to start my new car, I couldn’t get a squeak out of it. Moxon’s, who service it for me, had to come over from Kingsmarkham and pick it up. Some vital part had conked out, I don’t know what — I leave all that mechanical stuff to Hedda. But the thing was, I was stranded without a car which rather interfered with my little plan to surprise Lindsay by popping down to Brighton for her last week.

She, of course, was dreadfully disappointed that she wasn’t going to get her surprise. “Why don’t I come back and join you, darling?” she said when she phoned that Saturday night.

And get wind of what was going on down the garden path?

“I’d much rather be with you by the sea,” I said. “No, I’ll give Moxon’s a ring Monday morning. If the car’s ready I’ll just have to stagger into Kingsmarkham on the eleven-fifteen bus and collect it. It’s only an hour’s run to Brighton. I could be with you by lunchtime.”

“Heaven,” said Lindsay, and so it would have been if Hedda hadn’t sprung a little surprise of her own on me. Luckily — with my heavenly week ahead in view — I’d laid all those turfs and made a neat gravel path from the garage to the back kitchen door when, on Sunday night, Hedda phoned. She’d got all her work done, thanks to the efficiency of the temporary girl, and she was coming down in the morning for a well-earned rest. By twelve noon she’d be with me.

But I didn’t feel dispirited and there didn’t seem any point in phoning Lindsay. After all, we were soon going to be together forever and ever. Before I went to bed I made a final survey of the garden. The path looked perfect. No one would have dreamed it hid a forty-foot death trap going down into the bowels of the earth.

That was last Sunday night, the night the weather broke, if you remember. It was pelting down with rain in the morning, but I had to go out to establish my alibi. I caught the 10:15 bus into Kingsmarkham to be on the safe side. When Hedda says twelve noon, she means twelve noon and not a quarter past. But, by George, I was nervous, old man. I was shaking and my heart was drumming away. As soon as the Olive and Dove opened I went in and had a couple of what the doctor would have ordered if he’d been around to do an electrocardiograph. And I chatted with the barmaid to make sure she’d know me again.

At twelve sharp I beetled down to Moxon’s. Couldn’t have given a damn whether the car was ready or not, but if Moxon’s people were talking to me face to face at noon, the police would know I couldn’t have been at the farm pushing my wife down a well at noon, wouldn’t they? The funny thing was, this mechanic chappie said my car had been taken back to the farm already. The boss had driven it over himself, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure, having only just got in.

Well, that gave me a bit of a turn and I had a very nasty vision of poor old Moxon walking up to the house to find me and — however, I needn’t have worried. I was just getting on the bus that took me back when I saw Moxon himself zoom by in his Land Rover with the towrope.

It was still pouring when I reached home. I nipped craftily round the back way and in by the garage. Hedda’s Lincoln and my little Daf were there all right, the two of them snuggled up for all the world like a couple of cuddly creatures in the mating season.

Out of the garage I went on to my super new path. And it was as I’d planned — a big sagging hole edged with sopping wet turf where the well mouth was. I crept up to it as if something or someone might pop out and bite me. But nothing and no one did, and when I looked down I couldn’t see a thing but a bottomless pit, old boy.

Never mind the rain, I thought. I’ll get into my working togs, clear the well mouth of polythene, and call the police. Here is my wife’s car, officer, but where is my wife? I suspect a tragic accident. Ah, yes, I have been out all morning in Kingsmarkham, as I can prove to you without the slightest difficulty.

I was fantasizing away like this, with the rain trickling down between my raincoat collar and my sweater, when there came — my Lord, I’ll never forget it! — the most ear-splitting bellow from the house. In point of fact, from the kitchen window.

“Where the flaming hell have you been?” Only she didn’t say “flaming,” you know. “Are you out of your damned mind? I come here to find the place piled high with your filthy cigarette butts and not a duster over it for a fortnight. Where have you been?”

Hedda.

I nearly had a coronary. No, I’m kidding. I had the first symptoms. Pain up my left side and in my arm. I thought I’d had it. I suppose the fact that Hedda and I do have a perfect diet, the very best of proteins and vitamins, stood me in good stead when it came to the nitty-gritty.

Well, I sort of staggered up the path and into the kitchen. There she was, hands on hips, looking like one of those what’s-its — Furies or Valkyries or something. (Sorry, I’ve had a drop too much of your excellent Scotch.)

I could have done with a short snort at that moment. I didn’t even get a cup of coffee.

“One hell of a landscape gardener you are,” Hedda yelled at me. “A couple of drops of rain and your famous path caved in. Lucky for you it happened before I got here. I might have broken a leg.”

A leg, ha ha! Of course I realized what had happened. The water had collected in a pool till the polythene had sagged and the battens finally had given way. I would have to run into a wet spell, wouldn’t I, after the heat wave we’d been having?

“You didn’t put enough of that hardcore down,” said my wife in her psychopathic bird-of-prey voice. “Damn it, you live in the lap of luxury, never do a hand’s turn but for that piddling-around-the-peonies column of yours, and you can’t even fill in a damned well. You can get right out there this minute and start on it.”

So that’s what I did, old man. All that hardcore had to be hauled back by the barrow-load and tipped down the well. I worked on it all afternoon in the rain and all yesterday, and this morning I made another path. It’s messed up my back properly, I can tell you. I felt the disk pop out while I was dropping the last hundredweight in.

Still, Hedda had bought me that German stereo system I’ve been dreaming of for years, so I mustn’t grumble. She’s not a bad sort really, and I can’t complain that my every wish isn’t catered to, provided I toe the line. (No, I’d better not have any more. I’m beginning to get double vision, thanks all the same.)

Lindsay? I expect her back on Monday and I suppose we’ll just have to go as before. The funny thing is, she hasn’t phoned since last Saturday, though she doesn’t know Hedda’s back. I called her sister’s place this morning and the sister went into a long involved story about Lindsay going off, full of something about a surprise for someone — but Hedda came in and I had to ring off.

I can use your phone, old man? That’s most awfully nice of you. I don’t want the poor little sweet thinking I’ve dropped her out of my life forever.