‘What are you going to do? Look out, I tell you! You can’t –’ but whatever he was going to say was snapped short and drowned by a great bellow from the siren of one of the barges, which seemed to echo the rising hysteria in George’s own voice. Seeing George’s ludicrously working face, it occurred to Felix in a sudden flash that now would be the perfect opportunity for staging an impromptu accident. George’s panic, even as he despised it, was also goading him towards this. But he repelled the temptation to alter his original plan; that plan, he knew, was the best – to make assurance doubly sure. Let him stick to the set piece, and venture on no improvisations. But there would be no harm in giving George another fright.
The barges were now twenty yards away, hemming the dinghy into the bank. Felix had little room to manoeuvre in. He put about, and the course of the dinghy began to converge with that of the nearer barge. He was dimly aware of George gripping his leg and shouting in his ear, ‘If you run us into that barge, you bloody fool, I’ll bloody well hang on to you.’ Felix put his helm up and paid out the main-sheet, so that she spun about, her boom flying out to port, the great minotaur-browed stem of the barge sweeping past with ten feet to spare. As they were carried downwind past her side, George in an uncontrollable fury, staggered to his feet, and waved his fists and shouted imprecations at the impassive man in the deck-house. A youth sitting further aft stared at his gesticulations indifferently. Then the barge’s wash caught the dinghy, and George lost his balance, collapsing on to the floorboards.
‘I shouldn’t stand up again,’ said Felix Lane mildly. ‘Next time you mightn’t fall into the boat.’
‘Damn this—! Damn their eyes! I’ll—’
‘Oh, take a grip on yourself. We were never in the least danger.’ Felix went on conversationally. ‘The same thing happened the other day when I was out with Phil. He didn’t lose his nerve.’
The following barge swept past, a long, low, iron craft with INFLAMMABLE written along its deck cover. It certainly looked as if Felix was out to inflame his companion. As he hauled the dinghy round into the wind again on the port tack, and bounced across the swelling wake of the barges, he remarked coldly and distinctly, ‘I’ve never seen a grown-up person make such an exhibition of himself.’
It must have been a long time since anyone had addressed George like that. He stiffened, stared incredulously at Felix as though wondering if he could believe his own ears; then glowered at him dangerously. But after a few moments some new thought struck him, for he turned away, shrugging his shoulders and smiled a secret, sly smile to himself. Of the two, it was now Felix Lane who seemed to be growing more and more nervous, fiddling unnecessarily with the gear and casting uncertain glances towards his companion; while George, shifting his great bulk from side to side of the boat as she went about on new tacks, began to whistle and make occasional facetious remarks to Felix.
‘I’m beginning quite to enjoy myself,’ he said.
‘Good. Care to take a turn with the tiller now?’ Felix’s voice was dry, tense, almost a gasp. So much hung on the answer to that question. But George did not seem to notice anything amiss.
‘When you like,’ he replied carelessly.
A shadow, an expression that might have been translated as ambiguity or consternation or dark irony, came and went on Felix’s face. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper, yet there was a challenging note in it which could not be concealed.
‘Right you are. We’ll just go up a little bit farther, and then we’ll turn round and you can steer.’
Putting off, he thought to himself; infirm of purpose, putting off the crisis, your last chance, it must be, if it were done when ’t were done then ’t were well it were done quickly, but that was different, a very different kettle of fish, that fisherman there I wonder what he uses for bait, my rod is baited too, a rod in pickle for George Rattery.
The positions were now reversed. Felix was in a state of pitiable nerves, fidgeting no longer, but his whole body rigid with misery; George had regained his jocular tongue, his self-confident, supercilious, brutal attitude; or so it would have seemed to one of those ubiquitous, omniscient observers of Thomas Hardy, if such a one had been a third party in this bizarre voyage. Felix noted that the place he had marked out for action – a clump of elms away on the right bank – was now astern. Setting his teeth, still unconsciously watching for the approach of gusts on the port bow, he brought the dinghy round in a broad sweep. The swirled water chuckled at him sardonically. He could not meet George’s eyes as he said, in an abrupt, breathless voice:
‘Here you are. Take the tiller. Keep the main-sheet right out, like it is now. I’ll just go forward and raise the centre-board – she runs better like that, less resistance to the water.’
Even as he spoke, he received a queer impression that the wind had dropped, that everything had hushed into silence, the better to hear his crucial words and await their outcome. Nature seemed to be holding its breath, and in the hush his own voice sounded like a loud challenge cried from the top of a watchtower in a desert. Then he began to perceive that this shocking silence was not of wind and water, but emanated like a chill mist from George himself. The centre-board, he thought, I said I was going forward to raise the centre-board. But still he remained sitting in the stern-sheets, as though nailed there by George’s eyes, which he could feel boring into him. He forced himself to look up and meet them. George’s whole body seemed to have swollen and horribly advanced, like a creature of nightmare. It was just that George had quietly moved aft and was sitting close to him, of course. In George’s eyes there was an expression of crafty, naked triumph. George licked his gross lips, and said sweetly, ‘Very well, little man. Budge up and I’ll take the tiller.’ His voice dropped to an edged whisper. ‘But I shouldn’t try any of those funny tricks you’ve been planning.’
‘Tricks?’ said Felix dully. ‘What do you mean?’
George’s voice rose in a shattering gust of rage. ‘You know damn’ well what I mean, you filthy murderous little tick!’ he roared. The, quietly again, he said, ‘I posted your precious diary to my solicitors today – that’s the little job I had to do after lunch when I sent you off to get the boat ready. They’ve got instructions to open it in the event of my death and take the necessary action. So it’ll really turn out more unfortunate for you if you let me drown this trip, won’t it? Won’t it?’
Felix Lane kept his face averted. He swallowed hard and tried to speak, but no words would come out. The knuckles of his hand were dead white on the tiller.
‘Lost your lying little tongue, have you?’ George went on. ‘And your claws, too. Yes, I think we’ve drawn Pussy’s claws for him all right. Thought you were so damned superior, didn’t you? So much cleverer than all the rest of us. Well, you’ve been just a bit too clever.’
‘Do you have to be so melodramatic about it?’ Felix muttered.
‘If you start being rude, little man, I’ll break your jaw for you. In fact, I’ve a good mind to break it anyway,’ said George dangerously.
‘And sail the boat home yourself?’
George stared truculently at him. Then he grinned. ‘Yes, that’s quite an idea. I think I will sail the boat home myself. I can always break your jaw when we get back to terra firma, what?’
He pushed Felix aside, and took the tiller. The boat surged and swooped downwind, the banks fled past. Felix, still holding the main-sheet and automatically watching the leech of the sail for the dangerous lifting that would mean the beginning of a gybe, seemed sunk in apathy.
‘Well, hadn’t you better start something soon? We’re halfway to the lock already. Or have you decided not to drown me after all?’ Felix lifted one shoulder in a little gesture of resignation, of defeat. George sneered, ‘No? I thought so. Lost your nerve, eh? Want to save your rotten little neck. I thought you wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it now and take the consequences. I banked on that. Quite the psychologist, aren’t I? … Well, if you won’t ta
lk, I will.’
And he proceeded to explain, amongst other things, how Felix’s remarks one day at lunch had made him curious about this ‘detective novel’ he was writing, so he had gone up to his guest’s room one afternoon when he was out, and found where it was hidden, and read it. He had felt vague suspicions about Felix before that, he said, and the diary proved them well founded.
‘So now,’ he concluded, ‘we’ve got you in a cleft stick. From now on, you’ll have to behave, Pussy; you’ll have to watch your step very, very carefully.’
‘You can’t do anything,’ said Felix sullenly.
‘Oh, can’t I just? I don’t know exactly about the legal position, but that diary of yours would land you precious near a charge of attempted murder.’
Whenever George mentioned the word ‘diary’, he checked, then spat it out fiercely, as though the thing had stuck in his throat. He had evidently not appreciated the analysis of his character which it contained. Felix’s dull silence seemed to infuriate him: he began cursing his companion again, not full-bloodedly as before, but in querulous, shocked, incredulous terms, almost as though he was complaining about a neighbour’s radio which kept him awake at night.
As George whipped himself up into another frenzy of righteous indignation, Felix cut across it with, ‘Well, what do you propose to do about it?’
‘I’ve a darned good mind to hand over your diary to the police. That’s what I ought to do. But of course it would be very upsetting for Lena and – er – everybody. It’s just possible that I might decide to sell the diary back to you. You’re quite well off, aren’t you? Care to make an offer for it? – a generous offer, it’ll have to be.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ remarked Felix unexpectedly. George’s head jerked. He stared at the little man unbelievingly.
‘Wha – what’s that? What the devil d’you mean by—?’
‘I said don’t be silly. You know perfectly well that you won’t hand over my diary to the police—’
George gave him a wary, calculating look. Slumped in the stern, his arm rigid on the thwart, Felix was gazing up at the mainsail intently. George followed the direction of his gaze, persuaded for a moment that some surprise was going to be sprung at him out of the curved and bellying sail.
Felix went on, ‘– for the very good reason that you don’t want the police to haul you in on a charge of manslaughter.’
George blinked his eyes. His heavy face became suffused with blood. Incredibly, in the heat of his triumph over this dangerous little adversary, in the tumult of relief he had been feeling now that physical danger was past, in the gloating expectation of all he could do with the purchase money of the diary, he had been quite overlooking its contents – the perilous knowledge which Felix possessed. His fingers twitched; they ached to be at his companion’s neck, delving into his eyes, gouging and breaking this rotten little twister who seemed to have extricated himself from an impossible position, who had beaten him to the punch.
‘You can’t prove anything about that,’ he said truculently.
Felix’s voice was indifferent. ‘You killed Martie, you killed my son. I’ve no intention of buying the diary back from you. I don’t think blackmailers ought to be encouraged. Hand it over to the police, if you like. They give quite long sentences for manslaughter, you know. You can’t bluff it out. And even if you could, Lena would soon crack up. No, it’s a stalemate, my friend.’
The veins stood out on George’s temples. His clenched fists began to rise. Felix said quickly, ‘I shouldn’t try anything on, or there might be a genuine accident. A little self-control would do you no harm.’
George Rattery burst out into a torrent of abuse, which startled one of the riverside fishermen out of his trance. Chap must have been stung by a wasp, he thought, bad year for wasps, this is. One of the county team got stung the other day while he was fielding, they say. The little chap don’t seem to be worrying much. Wonder what pleasure he gets sailing a little boat up and down the river – give me a cosy motor launch every time, with a case of beer in the cabin.
‘– you’ll get out of my house and stay out,’ George was shouting. ‘If I ever see you again after today, you runt, I’ll bash you into a jelly. I’ll—’
‘But my luggage –?’ said Felix meekly. ‘I’ll have to come back and pack.’
‘You’ll not cross my threshold, do you hear? Lena can pack up for you.’ A crafty expression slid over George’s face. ‘Lena. I wonder what she’ll say when she hears you made up to her just to get at me.’
‘Leave her out of it.’ Felix smiled sourly to himself, annoyed at being infected by George’s melodramatics. He felt exhausted, bruised all over. Thank God, they’d reach the lock in a minute and he could put George ashore there. He put down the tiller and hauled in the mainsheet as they reached the bend. The boom swung over to starboard; the boat swerved and plunged. He thrust the helm hard up and she came back on to her course. The part of him that did this was real, all the rest a dream. Over the port bow he could see the flowers serried and shining in the lock-keeper’s garden. He felt melancholy and alone. Lena. He did not dare to think of the future. That had now been taken out of his hands. ‘Yes,’ George was saying. ‘I’ll see that Lena knows what a treacherous swine you are. That’ll finish things between you two.’
‘Don’t tell her too soon,’ said Felix wearily, ‘or she may refuse to pack my things for me. Then you’d have to do it yourself, and that’d be terrible, wouldn’t it? Escaped victim packs foiled murderer’s bag.’
‘How you can sit there and joke about it beats me. Don’t you realise—’
‘All right, all right. We’ve both been just a bit too clever. Let’s leave it at that. You killed Martie, and I’ve not quite managed to kill you, so I suppose you win on points.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake shut up, you cold-blooded freak! I can’t stand your face any longer. Let me out of this damned boat.’
‘All right. Here’s the lock. This is where you get off. Shift up, I’ve got to lower the mainsail. You can send my things over to the Angler’s Arms. Do you want me to write in your visitors’ book, by the way?’
George opened his mouth to let out the rage which suddenly boiled up in him again but Felix, pointing to the lock-keeper who was approaching, said, ‘Not before the servants, George.’
‘Had a good sail, gentlemen?’ asked the lock-keeper. ‘Oh, you getting out here, Mr Rattery?’
But George Rattery had already clambered out of the boat and thrust past the man, and was walking rapidly away without a word through the neat and coloured garden, his huge body looming ruthlessly over the flowers like a tank, walking straight across the beds in a blind fury and crushing the red flax under his feet.
The lock-keeper stared after him open-mouthed. The clay pipe dropped from between his lips and was shattered on the stone quay. ‘Here! Hi, sir!’ he called out at last in an injured, uncertain voice; ‘mind my flowers, sir!’ But George paid no heed. Felix watched his broad back retreating towards the town, and the swathe his feet had cut through the astonished, bright-eyed flowers. It was the last he saw of George Rattery.
Part Three
The Body of this Death
1
NIGEL STRANGEWAYS WAS seated in an armchair in the flat to which he and Georgia had moved after their marriage, two years ago. Outside the window lay the precise and classical dignity of one of the few seventeenth-century London squares not yet delivered over to unnecessary luxury shops and portentous blocks of flats for the mistresses of millionaires. On Nigel’s knee was a huge vermilion cushion, and on the cushion an open book. At his side stood the exceedingly complex and expensive reading-stand which Georgia had given him for his last birthday; at the moment Georgia was out in the Park, so he could revert to his old habit of reading in comfort off his cushion-lectern.
Soon, however, he tipped book and cushion over on to the floor. He felt too tired to take it in. The peculiar case of the Admiral’s butterfly collection, whi
ch he had just brought to a successful if rather embarrassing conclusion, had left him exhausted and depressed. He yawned, got up, teetered around the room for a bit, pulled a face at the wooden idol on the mantelpiece which Georgia had brought back from Africa, then picked some sheets of foolscap and a pencil off the desk, and slumped back into the chair again.
Georgia, coming into the room twenty minutes later, found him absorbed in composition.
‘What are you writing?’ she asked.
‘I’m composing a general knowledge paper. Favete linguis.’
‘Does that mean I’m to sit quiet till you’ve finished? Or do you want me to come and breathe over your shoulder?’
‘The former course would be preferable. I’m having a tête-à-tête with my unconscious. Very soothing.’
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Please. Make yourself quite at home.’
After five minutes, Nigel handed over a sheet of foolscap. ‘I wonder how many of those questions you can answer,’ he said.
Georgia took the sheet and read out loud what was written on it.
‘(1) How many fine words does it take to butter no parsnips?
(2) Who or what was “the dry wet-nurse of lions”?
(3) In what sense were the Nine Worthies?
(4) What do you know about Mr Bangelstein? What do you not know about Bion and Borysthenite?
(5) Have you ever written a letter to the press on the subject of bursting bullrushes? Why?
(6) Who is Sylvia?
(7) How many stitches in time save ten?
(8) What is the third person plural of the pluperfect tensor of Eivστεïv?
The Beast Must Die Page 10
