Miss Marple's final cases - Agatha Christie [48]
‘Well, there’s nothing much to tell for some time after that. Sylvia and I were married and we were very happy. But I realized, as soon as she was really mine, that I wasn’t cut out for the best kind of husband. I loved Sylvia devotedly, but I was jealous, absurdly jealous of anyone she so much as smiled at. It amused her at first, I think she even rather liked it. It proved, at least, how devoted I was.
As for me, I realized quite fully and unmistakably that I was not only making a fool of myself, but that I was endangering all the peace and happiness of our life together. I knew, I say, but I couldn’t change. Every time Sylvia got a letter she didn’t show to me I wondered who it was from. If she laughed and talked with any man, I found myself getting sulky and watchful.
At first, as I say, Sylvia laughed at me. She thought it a huge joke. Then she didn’t think the joke so funny. Finally she didn’t think it a joke at all—
And slowly, she began to draw away from me. Not in any physical sense, but she withdrew her secret mind from me. I no longer knew what her thoughts were. She was kind—but sadly, as thought from a long distance.
Little by little I realized that she no longer loved me. Her love had died and it was I who had killed it…
The next step was inevitable, I found myself waiting for it—dreading it…
Then Derek Wainwright came into our lives. He had everything that I hadn’t. He had brains and a witty tongue. He was good-looking, too, and—I’m forced to admit it—a thoroughly good chap. As soon as I saw him I said to myself, ‘This is just the man for Sylvia…’
She fought against it. I know she struggled…but I gave her no help. I couldn’t. I was entrenched in my gloomy, sullen reserve. I was suffering like hell—and I couldn’t stretch out a finger to save myself. I didn’t help her. I made things worse. I let loose at her one day—a string of savage, unwarranted abuse. I was nearly mad with jealousy and misery. The things I said were cruel and untrue and I knew while I was saying them how cruel and how untrue they were. And yet I took a savage pleasure in saying them…
I remember how Sylvia flushed and shrank…
I drove her to the edge of endurance.
I remember she said, ‘This can’t go on…’
When I came home that night the house was empty—empty. There was a note—quite in the traditional fashion.
In it she said that she was leaving me—for good. She was going down to Badgeworthy for a day or two. After that she was going to the one person who loved her and needed her. I was to take that as final.
I suppose that up to then I hadn’t really believed my own suspicions. This confirmation in black and white of my worst fears sent me raving mad. I went down to Badgeworthy after her as fast as the car would take me.
She had just changed her frock for dinner, I remember, when I burst into the room. I can see her face—startled—beautiful—afraid.
I said, ‘No one but me shall ever have you. No one.’
And I caught her throat in my hands and gripped it and bent her backwards.
Suddenly I saw our reflection in the mirror. Sylvia choking and myself strangling her, and the scar on my cheek where the bullet grazed it under the right ear.
No—I didn’t kill her. That sudden revelation paralysed me and I loosened my grasp and let her slip on to the floor…
And then I broke down—and she comforted me…Yes, she comforted me.
I told her everything and she told me that by the phrase ‘the one person who loved and needed her’ she had meant her brother Alan…We saw into each other’s hearts that night, and I don’t think, from that moment, that we ever drifted away from each other again…
It’s a sobering thought to go through life with—that, but for the grace of God and a mirror, one might be a murderer…
One thing did die that night—the devil of jealousy that had possessed me so long…
But I wonder sometimes—suppose I hadn’t made that initial mistake—the scar on the