Each night she took the breadknife to bed with her, confirmed in her conviction that she wasn’t being unreasonable when one of the mouselike people whom she met in the hall told her the house next door had been broken into and its old-woman occupant knocked on the head. Rosamund came in once at one, once at half-past two, and once she didn’t come in at all. Della got great bags under her eyes and her skin looked grey. She fell asleep over her desk at work while a bright-eyed, vivacious Rosamund regaled her friends in the cloakroom about the joys of her relationship with Chris.
But now there was only one more night to go...
Rosamund had left a note to say she wouldn’t be home. She’d see Della on the following evening when she collected her cases to take them to her mother. But she’d left the side gate unbolted. Della seriously considered bolting it and then climbing back over it into the side entrance, but it was too high and smooth for her to climb and there wasn’t a ladder. Nothing for it but to begin her vigil with the cigarettes, the glass of water, the phone, and the breadknife. It ought to have been easier, this last night, just because it was the last. Instead, it was worse than any of the others. She lay in the dark, thinking of the old woman next door, of the house that was precisely the same as the one next door, and of the intruder who now knew the best and simplest way in. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but the strongest instinct of all over-rode all her feeble attempts to concentrate on tomorrow, on work, on ambition, on the freedom and peace of tomorrow when that gate would be locked, never again to be opened.
Rosamund had said she wouldn’t be in. But you couldn’t rely on a word she said. Della wasn’t, therefore, surprised (though she was overwhelmingly relieved) to hear the gate click just before two. Sighing with a kind of ecstasy — for tomorrow had come — she listened for the sound of the bolts being drawn across. The sound didn’t come. Well, that was a small thing. She’d fasten the bolts herself when Rosamund was in bed. She heard footsteps moving very softly, and then the back door was unlocked. Rosamund took a longer time than usual about unlocking it, but maybe she was tired or drunk or heaven knew what.
Silence.
Then the back door creaked and made rattling sounds as if Rosamund hadn’t bothered to relock it. Wearily, Della hoisted herself out of bed and slipped her dressing gown round her. As she did so, the kitchen light came on. The light showed round the edges of the old door in a brilliant phosphorescent rectangle. That wasn’t like Rosamund who never went into the kitchen, who fell immediately into bed without even bothering to wash her face. A long shiver ran through Della. Her body taut but trembling, she listened. Footsteps were crossing the kitchen floor and the fridge door was opened. She heard the sounds of fumbling in cupboards, a drawer was opened and silver rattled. She wanted to call out, “Rosamund, is that you?” but she had no voice. Her mouth was dry and her voice had gone. Something occurred to her that had never struck her before. It struck her with a great thrust of terror. How would she know, how had she ever known, whether it was Rosamund or another who entered the flat by the side gate and the frail back door?
Then there came a cough.
It was a slight cough, the sound of someone clearing his throat, but it was unmistakably his throat. There was a man in the kitchen.
Della forgot the phone. She remembered — though she had scarcely for a moment forgotten her — the old woman next door. Blind terror thrust her to her feet, plunged her hand under the pillow for the knife. She opened the kitchen door, and he was there — a tall man, young and strong, standing right there on the threshold with Mrs. Swanson’s silver in one hand and Mrs. Swanson’s heavy iron pan in the other. Della didn’t hesitate. She struck hard with the knife, struck again and again until the bright blood flew across the white walls and the clean ironing and the table neatly laid for breakfast.
The policeman was very nice to Rosamund Vine. He called her by her Christian name and gave her a cup of coffee. She drank the coffee, though she didn’t really want it. She had had a cup at the hospital when they told her Chris was dead.
“Tell me about last night, will you, Rosamund?”
“I’d been out with my boy friend — Chris Maitland. He’d forgotten his key and he hadn’t anywhere to sleep so I said to come back with me. He was going to leave early in the morning before she — before Della was up. We were going to be very careful about that. And we were terribly quiet. We crept in at about two.”
“You didn’t call out?”
“No, we thought she was asleep. That’s why we didn’t speak to each other, not even in whispers. But she must have heard us.” Her voice broke a little. “I went straight to bed. Chris was hungry. I said if he was as quiet as a mouse he could get himself something from the fridge, and I told him where the knives and forks and plates were. The next thing I heard this ghastly scream and I ran out and — and Chris was... There was blood everywhere...”
The policeman waited until she was calmer.
“Why do you think she attacked him with a knife?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do, Rosamund.”
“Perhaps I do.” Rosamund looked down. “She didn’t like me going out.”
“Because she was afraid of being there alone?”
“Della Galway,” said Rosamund, “wasn’t afraid of anything. Mrs. Swanson was nervous about burglars, but Della wasn’t. Everyone in the house knew about the woman next door getting coshed, and they were all nervous. Except Della. She didn’t even mention it to me, and she must have known.”
“So she didn’t think Chris was a burglar?”
“Of course she didn’t.” Rosamund started to cry. “She saw a man — my man. She couldn’t get one of her own. Every time I tried to talk about him she went all cold and standoffish. She heard us come in last night and she understood and — and it sent her over the edge. It drove her crazy. I’d heard they wanted her to see a psychiatrist at work, and now I know why.”
The policeman shivered a little in spite of his long experience. Fear of burglars he could understand, but this... “She’ll see one now,” he said, and then he sent the weeping girl home to her mother.
The Dark Gambit
by Hugh Pentecost[2]
As we told you last month, when this new series began, Hugh Pentecost envisions a group of multinational corporations “on the verge of running the world,” of breaking down all trade barriers in order to gain the ultimate in a Global Supermarket.
In such a corporation, which Mr. Pentecost calls Quadrant International, he imagines a head man with such enormous power that he considers himself above the law — able and willing to buy some foreign governments, to silence or remove enemies, to achieve his conglomerate goals by any means — blackmail, boycott, terror, violence...
It is that head man whom Jason Dark is trying to identify, that unknown supertycoon whom Jason Dark is pursuing singlehanded — literally...
He was a plump sandy-haired man wearing wire-rimmed glasses that were slightly tinted. He had come out by the swimming pool and had sat down in one of the aluminum deck chairs to watch the child floating on her back. She had waved to him, although she didn’t know him, and he had waved back. His right hand was covered by a black glove. He drew it down quickly. It was still instinctive for him to use it.