Death of a Viewer

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Death of a Viewer

-Herbert Adams

[Dark Saint Alaick]

1. Conspiracy


"Sandra, we are broke."
"More than usual?"
"Infinitely more. Finally, definitely and completely broke."
"What is it--cards or racing?"
"Both, and something on the Stock Exchange. I am sorry, darling, but never in my life have I known such damnable ill-luck. Everything at once. To get square I plunged on Last Chance for the big race. It was a cert and it won. But the jockey was disqualified. That put the lid on."
There was no reply. The room was luxurious rather than poverty-stricken and the two people in it showed no signs of penury. It was an apartment in a South Kensington hotel. Not perhaps the most fashionable quarter in that area--if there is one--but its charges were high and its appointments adequate.
The man perched on the arm of a well-padded settee looked less rueful than his words might have suggested. He had good features and dark wavy hair. He was in evening clothes of the latest style, complete except that he had not yet donned his "tails.î His trousers, shirt and shoes left nothing to be desired. The girl, sitting in front of the mirror, was using her lipstick. Over her dainty underwear she had a quilted, silken bed jacket, partially fastened. The dress she was to wear lay on the bed. From his perch the man could see her reflection in the glass, the curves of her neck and the fine contours of her breasts. He could also see himself. They were in fact as good-looking a couple as one could easily find. He noted with pleasure, as he always did, her feminine shapeliness, her golden hair and clear blue eyes. He was watching the expression on her face. It had not changed as he told of his misfortunes and when she spoke her voice showed no emotion.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"How exactly do we stand?" she said at last.
"As the bankruptcy people, unfeeling brutes, will put it--liabilities £4,000, assets nil. I have enough cash to keep us here for another two or three weeks but I owe a tidy bit to Marcus Galloway. Nothing further doing there. Have you anything?"
"The price of a cab fare. My little bit gone?"
She could see his head as he nodded. "I am afraid, darling, everything is gone."
There was another uneasy silence. How would she take it? He watched her anxiously, as well he might.
"I was a fool to marry you, Ossie." The words were still cool. "I suppose all girls have that sort of madness when they are young. With some it turns out all right. They get the prizes. I got only--you."
"You enjoyed it while it lasted."
"Five years," she murmured.
He got up and kissed her shoulder. "Darling, I still love you and we have each other."
She made no response. Broke! The word was familiar enough to her. Her parents had been strolling players, as it was once called, or members of touring companies in more modern parlance. They were not good enough to get London engagements of any value, and although not often out of work there had been times when only loans from their friends kept them going. They had hoped for great things from her, but she had disappointed them. They got her chances but her talents did not lie that way.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"You have the looks, Sandra," her mother sometimes told her, "far better than most girls, but you say the words as though you were reading a story. You must be it, you must live it."
"She may wake up when she falls in love," her father had said. They both died when she was seventeen. She got a job as a model in a W End dressmaking establishment and her poise and her promising figure gave her some success. Before she was nineteen she met and married Captain Oswald Henshaw.
She thought she loved him and she imagined he was rich, He certainly spent money freely. She heard mention of five thousand pounds and supposed that was his annual income. She did not know it was his entire capital, left him by his father, and he was busy getting rid of it as quickly as he could. It is a tribute perhaps to his skill as a gambler--or to his luck--that it had lasted so long. At his suggestion she had put her modest savings, about three hundred pounds, into what he called their joint account so that they could both draw on it. Now that was gone, too. Luckily she had no debts, her parents had at least taught her the folly of that.
"I suppose I can go back to old Harbottle," she said at last. "What will you do?"
"I don't want you to go back to Harbottle, darling, to wear his rags from evening gowns to swim suits and be stared at by the other women and the men they bring with them, like a prize beast at a show."
"That is how we met."
"I took you from it. I don't want you to go back."
"What will you do?" she asked again, perhaps with a show of derision.
"What can I do? I would like the sort of job Tony Somers got--secretary to a rich American who really only wanted to see the high spots. But such chances are few and far between."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"You have your car."
"It went on Last Chance. I must hand it over at the end of the month. I sold my pearl studs too; these are fake."
"You never told me."
"It has been pretty sudden, my dear. I hoped to the last to get square."
Again there was silence. Her hands dropped to the dressing-table. They looked at each other in the mirror, perhaps as they had never done before. She had loved him and she was not very worldly-wise. She had realised for some months that things were not going well with them, but she had never thought they would be as bad as this. Perhaps it was the loss of her small savings that hurt most. She had accumulated them so slowly, so carefully, with a good deal of self-denial, in the days before she married "wealth." Something for a rainy day had been one of her father's maxims, even if he could seldom live up to it. Now, without a word to her, all was gone, gone with nothing to show for it to a bookmaker already over-rich.
"One hears on all hands that men are wanted," she said slowly.
"Men of experience, darling. What can I do? You would not have me drive a bus or tend a bar?"
She did not answer. After a time he spoke again.
"As a matter of fact I have a plan, but it needs your help."
"What is it?"

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"You know Ewen Jones?"
"Of course I do."
"He admires you tremendously."
She turned from the mirror and faced him.
"You have sold everything you possess, Ossie. If you think of selling me you must find someone with a lot more money than Ewen Jones." There was contempt in her tone.
"It is not that at all, darling. You may be the only precious thing left to me but I would not lose you for all the gold in the world. It hurts me that you should for a moment suggest such a thing."
"Then what are we talking about?"
"You say Ewen is not rich. That of course is true. He is a Member of Parliament--"
"For some squalid place in the East End."
"Yes, but it means nearly two thousand a year. I was at school with him and we were in the army together. His father, formerly Jimmie Jones and now Lord Bethesda, was as fiery Socialist as you could find in all Wales. Then they put him in the House of Lords and he married Connie Marden, the only daughter of the late Josiah Marden, the brewer. Josiah's father or grandfather started with a single pub but they acquired more and started brewing. When he died Josiah left something over half a million to his daughter after all duties had been paid."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"And if what Ewen says is true," Sandra commented, "Lady Bethesda still keeps a tight hand on it. How does this interest us?"
"When Socialists get into the House of Lords," her husband smiled, "they often tend to moderate their opinions. When they marry wealthy women the process may be quicker. Connie would not accept him if he kept the old name as many of them do. Lord Jones would sound a little foolish. So they became Lord and Lady Bethesda, after the place where he was born."
"How does this interest us?" Sandra repeated. "Ewen has little to do with his stepmother and his opinions are as strong as his father's used to be. His wife thinks like he does."
"His wife?"
"Gwennie Wren. I know she writes and speaks in her own name but she is his wife."
"How do you know that?" Ossie asked, smiling again.
"Isn't it true?"
"I very much doubt it, though it might be better if it were so. Certainly they have lived together for a time in that queer place in dockland, but marriage may or may not have come into it. They do not always agree and he is very tired of her. I don't blame him. You cannot have two tub-thumpers in one house, each trying to shout down the other."
"Is this leading anywhere?" Sandra asked.
"Yes, darling. One thing I want to make clear. Connie Bethesda has piles of pelf and oceans of pride. She would pay handsomely to prevent any breath of scandal coming to her family, or rather to the family she had honoured with her alliance."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"There is scandal already if Ewen and Gwennie Wren live together and are not married."
"East is east and west is west. Dockland to Connie is much farther away than the Riviera or New York. She only knows of Gwen as a writer of society gossip with a tendency to poisonous socialism. She keeps away from such things; won't allow them to be mentioned."
"What about Ewen's father?"
"If he knows or suspects anything he is too wise to tell his wife about it. The thing is this. Ewen admires you. If you encouraged him a little he would fall for you completely. If I discovered you and him in what we will call compromising circumstances and threatened an action for the alienation of my wife's affection Connie would pay up handsomely to settle out of court. You and I, happily reconciled, would be in clover."
Sandra looked at him for some moments without speaking. It would have been difficult for anyone to tell what she was thinking. In the curious world in which she had been brought up strict morality had been more conspicuous by its absence than its rigid observance.
"Say that again," she said slowly.
"I am not suggesting there should be anything wrong," Ossie replied. "I could not allow that. Heaven forbid. But if Ewen made love to you, as he would like to do, I see no reason why he or his family should not pay for it. It is just a little drama in which you and I would play our parts and it should have a happy ending. I believe in happy endings!"
"A sort of blackmail?"

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Not in the least, darling. I should demand nothing. I said I should threaten an action. If they offered me something not to bring it I should be forced to listen to them. Not only the slur on the noble Bethesda name would be involved but Ewen would be dropped by the party and lose his seat. With two thousand we could carry on. Connie might be good for ten."
"I never thought you were such a blackguard, Ossie."
"I am not. Desperate ills call for desperate remedies, that is all. Can you suggest anything better? You do not want me to drive a bus?"
She did not answer the question. She said, "If Ewen and Gwennie Wren are married Gwen might bring the action against Ewen and me. That would not help you. Lady Bethesda would not pay for mud already thrown."
"Clever of you, Sandra, to have thought of that. I had not overlooked it, but Ewen and Gwen are not married and never will be. I assure you that is a fact. She wants to have a life of her own. So does he. He is ambitious, and as I told you he is tired of her. You cannot have two kings in one castle."
"You are his friend."
"Of course I am! That is what makes it so bad for him to covet my wife."
Again she looked at him as though seeking to read the thoughts behind his smile. She did not doubt the truth of what he said about Ewen and Gwen. His plan would be so foolish if it were otherwise. She spoke slowly.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

"I think I understand. Would you put your proposals in writing, promising me half of anything you receive?"

He stared at her. Then he laughed.

"I never thought you were mercenary, Sandra."

"I am not," she said. "But I am learning."

"Of course I could not write anything like that. If you lost it, if anyone else got hold of it, we should be cooked. Might be charged with conspiracy."
"That is what I thought." She again spoke very slowly. "Suppose I really fell for Ewen?"

He bent forward and kissed her.

"I am not afraid of that. He is too stodgy for you and you love me. Come along, darling. We are late already. Slip on your frock and we will go to Pegano's for a drink. To the end of our troubles! We might meet him there and you could start the good work!"