I could only answer that I didn’t know, that probably he would be so interested in analysing exactly what our associations were that he wouldn’t see the thing itself. Like a painter. A painter would be too busy trying to spot how a sinuous line could carry such emotion.
He insisted that was a most intelligent remark. Yet it’s obvious. Say, I am looking at a rock face exposed by open-cast mining. I should be absorbed by the technical difficulties of the ore and the reasons why the company’s engineer cut this way and not another. I couldn’t be expected to see the beauty of the exposed strata.
‘In your opinion who is responsible?’ he asked.
‘Miss Carlis. Entirely. But she hasn’t the slightest idea of it.’
I don’t know what he expected me to answer. I could have said that the responsibility was mine for impulsively trying to help Fosworthy, or Fosworthy’s for denouncing his creed because he couldn’t find a place for love in it.
‘I see. You choose outside the circle. Well, she is still decisive. At least, her evidence is. She knows it was not you who killed Fosworthy, and she will tell the truth.’
‘What about the influence of Miss Filk?’
‘Miss Filk will break down. I know her, as you guessed. She won’t stand up to ordinary police enquiries, let alone cross-examination. I don’t credit all that Jedder told you. Torture is most unreliable.’
I remarked that I had not got a head-shrinker’s couch handy.
‘I’m sorry. Of course. But you’re up in the light of day now with predictable human beings, not with a bunch of terrified religious maniacs in the dark. Let me explain Miss Filk for you! Leaving out technicalities, you know how brutal and cruel the maladjusted teenage boy can be. He creates a fantastic world, through which he proves to himself his manhood. Well, she is like that. She is not in fact as markedly homosexual as she likes to think she is. So you would not be far off the truth in imagining yourself coshed by a fifteen-year-old who had seen too much violence on the telly and assumed that for real he-men it was normal.’
That was significant so far as it went. If Dunton was right, I had little to fear from Miss Filk in court.
‘I can’t help feeling that you are still at your frontier of the imagination,’ he went on. ‘I admit the police will start with a prejudice against you, but the case cannot be as difficult as you think. I can give evidence that long ago you asked me to explain the Apology. And you have Miss Carlis and Hawkins as well.’
I pointed out that Hawkins’ evidence cut both ways. Aviston-Tresco would not deny that he was trying to catch Fosworthy who was off his head and might do himself harm.
‘And it’s well known that he wouldn’t hurt a fly!’ I added bitterly.
We decided in the end that I should tactfully explore Cynthia Carlis. Indeed he offered to do it for me, but I flatly refused to have him drawn in when the consequences were unforeseeable.
What he could do and did was to call the Filk and find out what her movements were. When her number did not reply, he went to work through the grape-vine of various doctors.
‘She’s bolted,’ he said at last. ‘Gone to America by cargo boat with a dozen Dobermans for sale. I knew she wouldn’t face it. So Undine is all yours.’
He insisted that her indecisive romance with Fosworthy was of great importance to her, that she appeared to have liked and trusted me and that it was common sense to go and see her. I had no great trust in common sense as a guide through the Vale of Avalon. However, she had no connection with metaphysical animism, and Dunton was sure I had nothing to lose.
I stayed the night. The atmosphere of the house was good for me and healing. Since I hoped to attain in the future such peace for myself, I shrank more than ever from giving up a year of my life to the Law and newspaper publicity; but at least I found the moral courage to start safeguarding myself.
In the morning I drove to Bath and telephoned Miss Carlis. She remembered my name, but was very hesitant over accepting my invitation to lunch. Naturally she was. She knew that Fosworthy was dead and that she was in for an hour or two of explaining convincingly why she had not met him recently. But she could not refuse to see me. She suggested that I should have a drink with her at her flat before we went out. That suited me, too. From both our points of view, the preliminaries were better tackled in private than in a restaurant.
She had a charming flat and a window-boxed balcony in one of the old terraces. I wondered what eighteenth-century society would have made of her as she swept into the Pump Room; I can imagine the shady old beaux clamouring to the Master of Ceremonies for an introduction to such novelty. She had decided that for me she was going to be fragile and appealing. I reminded myself that if she had been some tattooed beauty of the South Seas I should certainly have been interested in the destinations and entertainment value of the patterns, and that it was ungallant to be put off merely because all that delicate lattice work was natural.
I started off by saying that I had lost touch with Barnabas and that I supposed she, at least, had seen something of him.
‘No.’
‘He never turned up at the Pavilion Hotel?’
‘No.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘A friend told me that he is mentally ill,’ she said. ‘Could he have been taken to hospital, do you think?’
‘It seems unlikely. Hadn’t your friend heard?’
‘No.’
So far it had hardly been possible for the poor girl to say anything else but No. Aware that she was repeating herself, she made a desperate effort to be constructive.
‘Surely his housekeeper and the village know something?’
‘His housekeeper has informed the police that he is missing,’ I said.
She could not go any paler than she was. The skin under her right ear started to throb, a pulsation made noticeable by the willow pattern. She rested her head on her hand, which suggested that the tell-tale sign had given her away before in moments of anger and emotion.
‘Have they been to you?’
‘Not yet. And if I am asked I shall simply say that I am as puzzled as everyone else. But I had better tell you that I know he is dead.’
‘How can you know? I don’t see how you can know! Who told you?’
I tried to calm her down. I said I knew very well that she had nothing to do with his death and that she was only present out of kindness and affection because she had been led to believe that he had hidden himself in a cave and would not come out.
‘I can’t bear it! I can‘t bear it! It was all dark and he was killed by a thing.’
‘What sort of a thing?’
‘A person, I suppose. A person who lived down there.’
It was a close shave, but thank heaven I avoided taking the plunge and saying that the thing was me.
‘How did he die?’
‘He slipped.’
‘But the thing?’
‘I don’t know. It pushed him. I don‘t know.’
She started making noises and tearing at herself. She looked as if she were going to bare her breast and beat it like some female in the Old Testament. I had not the slightest idea what to do. Probably Dunton could have carried on from that point and ended in complete command of her.
‘You won’t tell?’ she sobbed. ‘Promise me you won’t tell!’
‘I won’t. You can trust me.’
She clung to me for minutes, and even put up her tremulous, prehensile lips to be kissed. It was like kissing a butterfly which had determined to flutter the conventional movements of human passion. That, I suppose, was her intention. She was ready to let me play around with the willow pattern as far as I liked in the hope of creating some intimate bond which would keep me quiet.
At the time she seemed to me as stupid as a frightened prostitute. But I do not think I was fair. After all, I had been very full of compliments on our one previous meeting, and so she naturally put me in the class of desperate admirers rather than the opposition who were unaccountabl
y averse to her. And I must admit that there was an appealing delicacy in her approach, all the more obvious because she was trying to overcome it. I felt pity, not—or hardly not—desire. I remember thinking what a shame it was that some lover, gentle and adoring as Fosworthy, had not taken over her life at an early age. How well they could have educated each other!
Having dried her tears, I got out before they could start again, for she could not face any lunch. My principal witness had collapsed under me; and, worse still, if Aviston-Tresco and his friends were ever forced to tell her that the Thing was Mr Yarrow, they had an independent witness of their own. The jury’s taste would probably be split fifty-fifty, but the Judge—if not a venerable antique—would be of just the right impressionable age to protect her from the severities of my unfortunate counsel.
I drove straight home without stopping to tell Dunton the result of his advice. Either he would reproach me for not tackling Undine with more sense and authority, or he would blame himself. I was alone again, and on the whole I thought it was better so.
Next morning I started to pack and pay my bills. I had felt worried and a coward, but fairly safe; now I felt far from safe. If that unreliable girl took an overdose of barbiturates or found her nightmares unbearable, she might spill the whole story to some comforting police matron. I proposed to be safely abroad when it happened. Fighting an extradition order at a distance would be more congenial than the relentless procession from Magistrates’ Court to Assizes either as prisoner or as a witness whom everyone was trying to discredit.
The telephone rang, and I picked it up with unreasonable apprehension that the caller was going to introduce himself as speaking for the Bath C.I.D. A perfectly calm voice said:
‘This is Tom Aviston-Tresco.’
My ‘good-morning’ must have sounded almost cordial.
‘You’re a bloody fool, aren’t you?’ he remarked as if we were old friends.
‘Probably. How’s your arm?’
‘Stumps are never pleasant to live with. But I assure you I bear no malice.’
‘And I assure you that if you ever again come within my reach …’ I began, persuading myself that I ought to feel anger, though I am not sure how deeply I really felt it.
‘I am going to come within your reach,’ he replied. ‘We must talk urgently. What on earth made you stir up our little friend?’
‘Would you prefer me to go to the British Museum?’
‘They wouldn’t believe you. They would tell you that there was no interglacial warm enough.’
‘Well, there was.’
‘It’s always your assertion against everyone else’s, isn’t it?’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to recognise that our interests are the same. Surely you must have come across a similar position in the mining industry? Commercial greed versus the landowner’s rights, and regrettable incidents on both sides?’
I retorted furiously that I had never come across anything of the sort—which was not strictly true. Yet in spite of my loathing of him it was hard not to be impressed by his outward normality. One does not and cannot know the molten interior of a man. I remember a first-class accountant who was a keen Rotarian, a masterly tennis-player and carefully emanated a conventional, suburban conviviality; but the only thing he cared for was revelation of the future by the measurements of the Great Pyramid. His wife and children were nothing but respectable cover. His only reason for excelling in his profession was to have enough money for his research—about which his socially ambitious wife kept as quiet as if he had had an Egyptian mistress round the corner. He never tried to proselytise and never discussed his religion, if it was a religion. Nor did Aviston-Tresco. His normal, useful life revolved around a central, incandescent privacy.
‘We ought to talk at once,’ he said. ‘After all, we are two sensible professional men.’
‘If you think I am going to accept a chair or a drink from you …’
‘That is over. I will meet you where you like and under any conditions, so long as we are alone, of course.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In London. The West End.’
I said that I would talk to him in Kensington Gardens and meet him at the Albert Gate in twenty minutes. That did not give him time for any preparations. Then I locked up my flat and gummed threads to the bottom of the door and the vulnerable window so that I could tell if anyone had visited the place in my absence.
I was a little late for the appointment. He was waiting calmly, not looking round him or showing any sign of anxiety. I hardly recognised his drawn, white face. The empty right sleeve shocked me. I wished that it had been somebody else who had made him pay a price for murder and attempted murder.
I carried two deck chairs under a tree, and pointedly seated myself on his right so that he could only reach me—if he had anything to reach me with—across his own body.
‘Do you realise that we are all in considerable danger?’ he asked.
‘I realise that you are.’
‘Were. It has switched to you.’
‘Miss Carlis will tell the truth when it comes to the point,’ I said.
‘She can’t, because she has no clear idea what happened.’
I had never quite seen it that way. When I talked to Dunton, the point I made was that she knew it wasn’t me. I may have misled him.
‘She must have seen Jedder charging up out of the darkness.’
‘I doubt if she did. He switched off his light and followed the wall. All she knows is that poor Barnabas was pushed.’
‘She was crying out that he slipped.’
‘I know. We’ll come to that in a minute.’
‘At any rate she can’t for a moment believe I did it.’
‘I was not there, so I have only various descriptions of the scene,’ he said. ‘Nobody saw anything clearly. What Cynthia Carlis did see seems to have terrified her to this day—a woolly thing rising from the rocks, covered with mud and blood.’
‘She’s not so half-witted as to think it was a troll or something.’
‘No. But it’s more comforting to believe that than what she suspects.’
‘What does she suspect?’
‘Filk, of course!’
‘But what earthly motive?’
‘Jealousy.’
‘But Miss Filk was a little way ahead with her two dogs,’ I protested. ‘It couldn’t possibly have been her.’
‘Couldn’t it? I have never quite understood the setup. But I see no reason why Filk should not have darted back when the lights went out. Look at it from Miss Carlis’ point of view! We were all close friends of Barnabas. Only Filk had a motive. Filk’s attitude to anyone who hurt her pride was that of a juvenile delinquent. Of course Miss Carlis assumed it was Filk, but rather than face it and accuse her she preferred the alternative of the unspeakable monster.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Filk lost her nerve. She’s gone to America. Before she left, she told her Cynthia that if anyone started asking questions about the cave she was to get in touch with me at once. She did. Last night.’
‘But if she thinks Miss Filk pushed Fosworthy she’ll keep her mouth shut and we are safe.’
I see now that the ‘we’ committed me beyond recall—in my own mind, if not in fact.
‘She would, if you had not come along—an old friend of the Fosworthy family—and claimed to know all about it. She is terrified of what you might do.’
I replied that she would see sense soon enough, after I had sworn in court that Jedder cut off the light.
‘Or was it you who cut it off? What help do you think you’ll get from a shallow woman who is lonely and afraid? What sense as soon as she knows the monster was you? You killed one of Filk’s dogs and frightened her out of her wits. You blew up Jedder and tortured him. You shot at our popular and harmless Bank Manager. And your subsequent disappearance was a positive epic of petty crime. Who do you think she is going
to say killed Barnabas?’
‘All very pretty!’ I answered as coolly as I could. ‘But you don’t want to put it to the test any more than I do. How’s Jedder? Or is that another of my murders on the list?’
‘They say he will recover. But I needn’t tell you the police are suspicious.’
He explained that Jedder’s three friends—the Bank Manager cleared off promptly after lighting their way out and telephoning for an ambulance—had succeeded in spite of their abject nervousness in faking an explosion before the police arrived at dawn. They found .22 cartridges in Jedder’s gun-room down at the farm and put some in a flat wooden box: the sort of box a man could conceivably stamp on by accident. They bored a hole in the lid through which they inserted one of the remaining detonators and a length of fuse. Enough of the cartridges blew up to be convincing, always provided that the story of accident was never questioned. If it was, laboratory examination would prove at once that neither wood nor brass matched the splinters in Jedder’s leg.
‘And has it been questioned?’ I asked.
‘Not so far as I know. But the police are showing a tactful interest in our meetings, which they think may have been—well, bizarre in the extreme.’
‘What sort of bizarre?’
‘Do I know? Mysterious rites. Black magic. Gunpowder and sulphur—’ it was the first time I had ever heard him laugh. ‘They must be thinking of pantomimes and the devil popping through a trap door in a cloud of smoke. But if Miss Carlis starts mentioning caves—just imagine the teams of ardent pot-holers and the finding of Fosworthy’s body! You can never make any money now, Yarrow.’
I told him that I never had any such intention. He shrugged off the words as if he appreciated that I had to practise my lie. He did not try at all to believe that I had helped Fosworthy simply from pity or whatever it was. I reminded him that Fosworthy aroused affection and concern in any decent human being, and asked him how he could have treated a man he loved so cruelly. I could understand shutting him up until he promised to keep quiet about their private chapel of the animals. I could even understand that the temptation to remove me—since it was almost without risk—had been very strong. But it was beyond me, I said, that he could have brought himself to murder Fosworthy merely because he was loyal to me.
The Courtesy of Death Page 14
