‘He would have stopped at nothing to protect you.’
‘Then you should have faced it.’
‘Why? You give such strange importance to dissolution. To kill is only to deprive ourselves. A man is the same as any other higher animal. He is indestructible.’
What is one to call such a creed? All the religions insist to us that we must have faith; yet what these fanatics needed was a theologian to preach to them that they must not have too much faith. In fact, now that I come to think of it, that is about what Fosworthy did. As soon as he suddenly started to value romantic love, he lost interest in his mere survival; it was what he could take with him or rediscover that became important.
It was useless to argue with a man who felt as litde guilt—or as much—at putting down a human being as putting down an old cow, so I returned crudely to the problem of Cynthia Carlis and asked him what he had in mind when he telephoned me.
‘I have only one arm and no strength,’ he replied. ‘But if you agree I am going to put myself in your hands.’
‘Like hell you are! What’s the proposal?’
‘I only see one way to calm Miss Carlis. I feel that Barnabas’ body should be found somewhere else—on an inaccessible ledge, say, in the Cheddar Gorge where he could have fallen and remained for weeks undiscovered.’
‘What good does that do?’
I saw, of course, that it would be helpful if nothing more than Jedder’s private, well-lit hobby were revealed whenever police investigated the cave. But removing the body did not seem to affect Undine’s apprehensions one way or the other.
‘The coroner’s verdict is accident. Barnabas used to take long walks alone, and the medical evidence will show that he was killed by a fall,’ Aviston-Tresco explained. ‘That puts an end to her sense of the thing being unfinished and dangerous. She would even be able to send some flowers. I’m not being cynical. She is a very conventional woman and she was fond of him. Flowers would act as a tranquilliser. And what then? Filk comes rushing back from America. They settle for the unknown person in the cave—neither of us are going to name him—and live happily ever after.’
I said that I certainly should not interfere and that he had better get on with it.
‘Without Alan Jedder I can’t. What use am I?’
‘What about his three thugs? Can’t you trust them?’
‘One. He can stay at the hatch. The other two—nothing will ever get them near the barn again.’
‘I thought you people were above fear.’
‘Of dissolution, yes. If it were still the law, I would not mind being executed. But to be imprisoned for years, to be without my friends, the hills, the animals—that I dread. Hanging settles nothing and is humane.’
‘Like the vet’s incinerator,’ I retorted in an attempt to get through his armour.
‘Yes, if the animal is very small,’ he answered, quite undisturbed except for a note of deep melancholy in his voice.
‘Or a car seat, if it isn’t.’
‘You are a man of great courage,’ he said, ignoring my remark as if it were both petty and in bad taste. ‘Come with me and get up the body!’
‘I’m damned if I do!’
‘Then I must tell Cynthia Carlis that the monster was you.’
‘In that case it will be a long fight. I shall get a concession for the picture postcards to pay my legal expenses.’
‘I will accept any conditions you like. I shall be a hostage, completely at your mercy.’
That was true enough so far as it went and if I could devise absolute safeguards. So I asked him what the depth of the abyss was.
‘About seventy feet. We can use Jedder’s winch. If you lower me, I am capable of tying Barnabas to the rope with one hand. After you have pulled him up, you are free to pull me up or leave me there as you like.’
He knew as well as I did that I shouldn’t leave him there, much as I should enjoy it in principle. I told him to lay off the pathos, and asked how we were to get back through the hatch.
‘You go first. I cannot stop you.’
‘The man up top can.’
‘Make your own conditions!’
It seemed to me that I ought to be able to concoct some watertight conditions. I did not entirely accept his arguments. But once Fosworthy’s death had been officially accepted as accident, it became pointless to accuse me of anything. Besides that, there was a conventional streak in me which was in some sympathy with Undine. I, too, should be ‘tranquillised’ by knowing that the body was in a West Country churchyard rather than that vile place.
‘Among my other petty crimes,’ I said, ‘is the illegal possession of a .45 revolver. Any monkey business and I use it on you.’
‘I have to accept that.’
‘As soon as Fosworthy’s body is in the gallery, the man on top will come down. I shall then go up the ladder and leave the rest to him.’
‘Provided you lend a hand from on top, if necessary.’
I then saw a possible catch. There would be only one man at the hatch when Aviston-Tresco and I went down, but there might be two or more when I was ready to come up.
‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ Aviston-Tresco replied. ‘I can only swear that there isn’t more than one. If there was, I would use him, not you. Look at it this way! You are a far more dangerous brute than any of us. Your hypothetical other man could very well fail to kill you, as the Bank Manager did. You would then be justified in using that .45 of yours, closing the hatch on the bodies and going away. You are unknown. If you had been presentable and unhurt last time, you were in the clear. This time—well, I suggest a clothes brush as well as your .45.’
‘What makes you think that the winch can be moved single-handed?’
‘Experience. I’ve done it. It just needs a crowbar to lever the wheels over ridges.’
‘Suppose your weight pulls it over the edge? The floor of the passage slopes towards the drop.’
‘Jedder used to anchor it to anything handy.’
I could not remember anything handy, and warned him that the job would take some time. I then cross-questioned him about their plans after I had left and the hatch was closed up again. He told me that his associate owned land close to the edge of the Cheddar Gorge. He was going to use a tractor and trailer, the wheelmarks of which would not be new to the field. He would lower the body by a rope and then go down himself to arrange it convincingly,
‘I think you ought to know a lot more about police procedure than you do,’ I said. ‘Mysterious falls are not accepted so easily.’
He talked me out of that. Anyway I did not greatly care. It was they, not I, who would have to stand the racket if they slipped up. One thing in all this was certain and constant: that they would never mention the cave if I did not.
Caution was wide awake; but, so far as his personality went, I was partly anaesthetised by him as if I had been that little animal he mentioned. Apart from his obsession with the insignificance of death, he was a man out of my own West Country childhood—able, quiet, welcome in any society. And pity counted. God knows he did not deserve it! But if we limit our pity to those who do, bang goes Christian civilisation.
We fixed the date for three nights later at 10 p.m. in the barn. He was too eager to discuss with me how I should travel and by what route I should reach Jedder’s farm, so I told him nothing. I was not going to allow him to count on any movements of mine beyond my presence at the appointed time.
In the course of the next two days I gave much thought to the question of whether I should take my car or not and decided against it. I did not want to leave the slightest evidence of my visit to the district. There was no large public car park except in Wells or Glastonbury—where I could not risk being seen—and a car left in a small village or by the side of a lane can always arouse curiosity.
So I went down by train from London to Weston-super-Mare and then took a tourist bus to the Cheddar Caves. When the pubs opened I ate a hearty early supper, unnoticed am
ong the crowd of sightseers, and started to walk across the bleak top of the Mendips towards Jedder’s farm which was about six miles away. There was nothing on my back or in my pockets to show who I was. While I did not expect any trouble, I was taking no chances.
I was dressed in a stout windbreaker and cord trousers with a light knapsack on my back. It contained the revolver, a really powerful electric lantern and, as an insurance policy, a few cans of food and a flask of whisky. I had also the clothes brush which Aviston-Tresco had suggested and another windbreaker, dark blue instead of dark red, which I carried partly to soften the lumps in the knapsack and partly to change my appearance in case that should be advisable. I was confident that I should be in command of any trouble underground, but the more I thought of their vague plans for the disposal of poor Fosworthy, the more I distrusted them.
I soon wished I had taken the car, for it was a foul evening with sheets of cold rain swirling up from the Bristol Channel and water gurgling into the drains of the empty road. I skirted Jedder’s farm and had some trouble in identifying the right barn, which I had never seen in daylight. It was indeed on rising ground, but not easily visible, since it stood in a shallow bowl. This bowl, which I had hardly noticed as I ran away from it, was, I should guess, the result of subsidence. Beyond the end of the passage and the changing-room there may at some period have been a limestone dome which collapsed.
I had three hours to wait, so I tucked myself in between a twisted thorn and a dry-stone wall alongside the track to see what I could see. The rain at last eased up. A young brood of plovers rose from the grass while the parent birds, wheeling overhead, cried what must have been encouragement to their chicks but sounded to me like thin voices of the long-dead hunters. It occurred to me that they never drew a bird, feeling perhaps that, while earthbound creatures like themselves could live again beneath the earth, it was blasphemy to immure, down there in the silence where no birds sang, the freedom of the air. Then came the gulls, one wide, purposeful arrow after another marking the high limits of the dusk. And then came a solitary car with Aviston-Tresco beside the driver.
He dropped the vet at the barn and drove away. When it was already dark, he came back with a tractor and trailer, parked them outside the barn and went in, carrying a drum of paraffin. All was silent, and I was alone with the surrounding barrows. The millennia had worn them down to a height hardly more than that of a man, but in the scrappy moonlight they doubled their true size. It was probably the effect of that hardly perceptible bowl.
I took the .45 out of my knapsack and at ten knocked on the barn door. There was dark quiet inside and I had to say who I was. They then opened up. Aviston-Tresco looked intensely relieved so far as I could judge from the hidden pools of his eyes, and the stark black and white of his head in the light of the standing lamp. His companion was the man I had described to myself as the cricketer from his far too accurate missiles. I never knew his name. He had more guts than the rest, but even so tended to shy at the formidable weapon in my hand. I do not think Aviston-Tresco had warned him that the long, black barrel was going to precede me wherever I went.
I thoroughly searched the pair of them, turning out all Aviston-Tresco’s pockets in case he was carrying a syringe or other implement of his trade. I found nothing. He too was nameless and world-forsaken. He had only a small electric torch, a pocket knife, a few shillings, his cigarettes and matches.
The cricketer expected me to help him to remove the hay bales. I thought it best to carry on with the intimidation and remain at a range where I could not be thrown off my aim by sudden darkness or sudden movement. I reminded him that we had plenty of time and that Fosworthy had removed the bales single-handed. When he opened the hatch I told him that if at any time I found it shut, that was the end of Aviston-Tresco.
‘Give me half an hour’s grace,’ he replied. ‘Suppose police or one of Jedder’s farm-hands were trying to force the door, and I had to shut down.’
I agreed to that, but warned him that he would have to get rid of his visitors in half an hour if he wished to see Aviston-Tresco alive again.
Aviston-Tresco calmly supervised the lowering of the drum of paraffin and apologised for the lack of lights down below as if I had been a casual tourist, explaining that in the absence of himself and Jedder no one had dared to start up any activity in the barn.
He ignored my menacing attitude as irrelevant. As usual this moved me to give some consideration to him.
‘The rope is going to be too painful under your shoulders,’ I said.
‘Is it?’ he answered. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought.’
I looked round the barn for something which would make a cradle for him and found an old cart-horse girth of canvas and leather which was still sound. If he sat on that with a light line tied round it at the level of his chest, he would have his good arm free to fend off the rock face as I lowered him.
‘By the way,’ he asked, ‘where did you leave your car?’
‘I came on foot. So it’s no good thinking of booby traps.’
He made an impatient gesture which reproached me for being unnecessarily brash. The cricketer lowered the aluminium ladder. They appeared as if about to shake hands, but did not. At any rate a current of emotion passed between them—naturally enough, I thought, when the job was to pull up their once respected prophet whom Jedder had murdered.
Aviston-Tresco went down first. He was very shaky. It gave me an excuse to get him up on my back when we returned. That would provide certain protection at the one point—emerging from the hatch—where I was still not quite convinced that I was safe.
We passed through the yellow mud of that badly shored gallery which always offended me, and down what was left of the companion ladder into the darkness. Aviston-Tresco had not seen the damage before and did not expect it. I helped him down and he politely thanked me.
In the changing-room we filled and lit some lanterns, and then visited the tool-store to examine the winch. Aviston-Tresco was quite right; there was nothing very heavy except the wooden stand and the main cog. A lever and ratchet raised the stand on its wheels, which were a good foot in diameter, or lowered it to rest firmly on the ground.
I measured and tested the rope, which was first-class stuff. Jedder was no builder, but reliable in the mechanical tasks of a seaman. It was obviously impossible to keep Aviston-Tresco covered during all this preparation, so I made him sit down at a distance and shone my torch on him from time to time to see that he was behaving. When I had fixed the sling, I told him to walk slowly ahead of me holding a lantern while I trundled the trolley along behind with another lantern and some tools lashed to the winch. I was glad of the activity, for the passage began to oppress me as soon as we were engaged in it. A pigsty smell hung in the still air, undoubtedly left by me. The ghost of one’s own animal stench is an odd and disturbing thing to revisit.
Aviston Tresco stopped at my alcove and looked at the ashes of the fire and the bones and scraping of my revolting diet.
‘The working floor,’ he murmured.
We passed through the great cave by following the wall and the useless wires of the lighting system. Even with our two paraffin lamps and my electric lantern, that was the only sure way. At this point I had an attack of shivering. Poor monster! He had only been desperate and frightened. He was still unduly nervous and would have shot at the first sound from nothingness.
I had never looked down the precipice on the left of the wired passage, having no interest in it before Fosworthy’s death and only paraffin lamps afterwards. Without lying on one’s stomach on the sloping, slippery track—which I had no intention of doing—it was hard to see anything but the irregular wall of the cave on the far side.
Keeping Aviston-Tresco well away, I explored the edge of the drop. Further along the passage, the lip curved out a little, forming a promontory which ended in a lump of rock. It gave an illusion of safety while kneeling alongside, for there was enough of it to lean against. I
screwed up the lens of my fine, new light and threw a beam on the bottom of the cleft, more like eighty than seventy feet below. It was wider than the top, and dry. Boulders and rocks covered the floor, none of them water-worn. Plainly a cave roof had at some time fallen in. Among the smaller rocks was a long, narrow one with a white patch at the far end of it. It was Fosworthy’s body.
I now knew where to site the winch so that Aviston-Tresco would come down more or less in the right place. Its lack of stability bothered me; as an engineer I probably tended to fuss too much. In the end I squared off a crack in the cave wall at ground level, and pushed into it the back of the stand, supporting the front on chocks. My companion watched all this disinterestedly.
I made him sit in the girth and ran a line round the canvas and his chest, telling him to hang on to the rope with his good arm. Owing to the overhang he would not have to fend off the rock face, but he would probably spin. I promised him that there was no risk of the rope fraying since I had chosen a channel for it which was smooth with a film of deposit. He submitted resignedly to every one of my suggestions.
He wriggled over the edge, and I let him down slowly. The winch was so close to the cave wall that I had to work it with my back to the drop, shouting to him at intervals for a progress report. He said that he was spinning, yes, but not fast, that he was well out from the rock and could not bump into anything. He told me when he was near the bottom, and I let out rope gently until the weight came off it. Then I went out to my promontory to help him with a beam of light. He himself had only his pocket torch.
He had landed right by Fosworthy’s feet. So far as I could see, he was not at all shaken by the proximity. He slipped out of his lashing, and then to my alarm cast off the sling from the rope. I shouted to him to leave it alone since with only one hand he might not be able to attach it again by a secure knot, but he paid no attention. He tied the rope tight round Fosworthy’s waist and told me to go ahead. I wound the drooping bundle up as respectfully as I could, reminding myself that affection, even as casual as mine for Fosworthy, should not be disturbed by the results of decomposition.
The Courtesy of Death Page 15
