by Mary Stewart
‘Not always. Sometimes when she’d been too difficult. Oh, why the fuss, it did her no harm! You know how well I nursed her! You know how I had worked and cared for all those months, and how she would ring her bell night and day, and never must we be tired, always ready to run for this thing and that thing, and cook special food … But I wouldn’t have harmed her, you know that! Only one or two drops I gave her, and then I would nurse her through it, and afterwards there would be peace for a few days.’
‘And then she would be grateful. Yes, of course. Clever girl, Halide. Is that when she gave you the ring? Yes? What else did she give you?’
‘Many things! And she meant me to have them! She said so! She gave me these things herself because I had cared for her! You shall not take them from me … indeed you dare not, because I gave them to my father and brother who will keep them! And then when I become an English lady—’
He spoke between his teeth. ‘You killed the old woman. Do you not realise that even now, you stupid black bitch?’
‘I did not!’ Her voice was shrill with rage. ‘How can you say this? It was only medicine, I tell you, and I took it from the chest that John keeps in his room – you know the old medicine box that the Lady’s husband took on his expeditions—’
‘That prehistoric collection? God knows what was in it! Do you mean to tell me John knew about this?’
‘No, I tell you I took it! But I asked him what it was before I used it. I would not have used it unless I knew it was safe! It was not poison! He said it was a purge, made from the seed of some plant … yes, a spurge plant – I remember that because the words were the same, and—’
He had been sniffing at the bowl he held. Now he gave a great gasp as though he needed air. ‘So that’s it! Spurge plant, my God! It’s croton oil, and I doubt if even old Boyd used the stuff in the last fifty years except for the camels! “One or two drops”, indeed! Twenty drops and you’d kill a healthy horse! And you gave that stuff to an old woman, a sick woman—’
‘It did her no harm! You know it did her no harm! Three times I gave it to her, and she got better—’
‘And the last time,’ said Henry Grafton very softly, with the wire in his voice beginning to shake, ‘she’d had a coronary just three weeks before. And so she died … and if you’d kept your stupid fingers out of the pie she’d be alive today and we wouldn’t have these damned people round our necks, and the whole job done as smoothly as kiss your hand and away with one fortune and time to collect another at harvest. But you – you—’
And he dashed the soup, bowl and all, in her face in an access of blinding rage.
The stuff was no longer hot, but it was greasy and it took her full across the eyes. And the bowl smashed. It must have been of fine china, because it didn’t smash against the boxes behind her, but right across her cheek-bone. There was a still second before she screamed, and the scream choked because some of the slimy stuff went into her mouth and throat and gagged her, then she doubled up, retching and choking, and the blood came welling in a slabby stream on her cheek and mixed with the greensick slime of the soup.
Grafton swung his arm as if to strike her. I gave a cry of protest and jumped forward and grabbed it.
‘That’ll do! For pity’s sake!’
He wrenched away to disengage himself. The movement was violent and – thrust by his shoulder – I went reeling back, sent the tray flying, and almost fell against the door. His face was that curious dark red, and his breath snorted in his throat. I don’t know if he would have hit her again, but there was a flash in her hand, and she came away from the wall of crates like a leaping cat, claws and knife, and went for his face.
He was quick on his feet as many shortish men are, and I think it was purely reflex, too quick even for his thought, which made him leap back clear of those raking claws and the knife she had whipped from somewhere, Damascus-bright. She was on him. The knife flashed. He had no weapon – who would need it against me? – and he snatched up from the clutter the first thing that came to hand. I think even then what he snatched for was the whip that lay on the pile of camel harness, but his hand missed it by centimetres, and what he lifted and lashed down with was not the flexible whip, but the heavy, cruel goad.
It caught the girl full across the temple. She seemed to slacken in the middle, as if a spring had broken. She still lurched forward, but the claws slid loose and harmless down the man’s neck, and the stabbing knife missed his throat by inches as her body pitched against him and slithered, joint by joint, into a slack and thudding collapse at his feet. The knife fell just before the final drop of the body, with a tinkling little sound on the floor. Then the upper part of her body slumped, and the head hit the stone with a small, and quite final little crack.
In the silence, I heard the lamp fluttering again like a caught moth.
My knees felt as if they didn’t belong. I was back in the smoke, helpless, floating. I remember that I had to push myself away from the door, to go to Halide.
I had forgotten he was a doctor. Before I had done more than decide I must move, he was down beside her on one knee.
I took a step. I croaked somehow: ‘Is she dead?’
What he was doing took not more than a moment, then he got to his feet. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. I’d never seen a dead body before, only people shamming dead on stage or screen, and I can tell you, no one could ever mistake death for anything but death, not once they’d seen it.
Whatever I was trying to say, choking on it through bile in my throat, never got said. Henry Grafton turned round on me now. He still had the goad in his hand.
Of course he had never meant to kill her. But she was dead, and I had seen it. And something else, I believe, got through to me – how, I don’t know, except that just at that moment in the horrible little room reeking with soup and the oil lamp and something else that may have been death, all nerves were stripped raw and felt as if they were exposed like white roots all over the skin. He had never killed before, and maybe he didn’t quite believe it even yet, or believe how simple it had been. Whatever soothing lies he had been telling himself about Charles and me, now he knew. Now the decision had made itself. He had taken the first step on a very easy slide … And behind those dilated black eyes, for all I knew, he could be smoked as high as an Assassin with the damned drug himself.
I shall never be sure if what I did then was the stupidest thing I could have done. Perhaps I should have stayed where I was and spoken calmly, till the dark-red look went from his face and the suffused eyes cleared.
But all I could see was that the doorway was clear and that I was nearer to it than he was.
I didn’t stop to argue. I turned and ran.
17
The Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing – Oh, make haste!
E. Fitzgerald: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
The passage was well enough lighted; someone had put oil-lamps in one or two of the old torch-brackets – probably in preparation for the night’s work – and these showed me the stairway to the Prince’s Divan.
It was the only way to go. There was no point in making for the Seraglio, since I couldn’t hope to get down from the window alone; the postern was locked, and Jassim was guarding the main door. Besides, there was Charles. My only hope was the Prince’s Divan and the rifle.
I was about a third of the way up the stairs when the arras at the top was swept aside and John Lethman came through like a pea from a catapult, shouting, ‘Grafton! Grafton!’ and hurtled downstairs three at a time. Before I could stop myself, I had run straight into him.
He gave a grunt of surprise and held me fast. What must have surprised him even more was that I made no attempt to get away. I suppose if I had been in a fit condition to think I might have expected Halide’s murder to put him on my side against Grafton, but I wasn’t thinking, and it was only instinct that made me see him almost as a rescuer, as corruptible rather than yet corrupt
, a man who could surely not stand aside and watch me killed.
‘How did you get out?’ he snapped. Then – ‘What’s happened?’
I couldn’t speak, but as I clung to him, pointing back at the storeroom door, Henry Grafton erupted into the corridor below us with the goad in his hand.
At the sight of us he stopped dead, and the goad slowly sank until its iron tip rested on the floor. There was a little pause, during which nobody said anything, then Lethman, gripping me by the arm, dragged me after him down the staircase and back towards the door.
I didn’t look. I think I shut my eyes. Lethman didn’t go in, he stopped just short of the doorway.
Henry Grafton cleared his throat and spoke. ‘It was an accident. She went for me.’ Then as no one said anything, suddenly savage, to me: ‘Tell him it was an accident, you little fool! Tell him what happened!’
I didn’t look at either of them. ‘Oh, yes, it was an accident. He never meant to kill her, I’m sure of that. He threw the soup at her in a temper and she went for him and he grabbed for something – the whip, I think – and got hold of that thing. I don’t suppose he noticed in the mad rush that it was made of iron.’ I added in a tight voice that was unfamiliar even to me: ‘And as a matter of fact I can’t even pretend I’m sorry. I gather from what they were saying that she killed Great-Aunt Harriet.’
That brought him up sharply. He still kept his grip on my wrist, but he seemed to have forgotten about me. He swung on Grafton.
‘She what? Halide killed the old lady? What’s this?’
‘It’s true.’ Grafton was staring down at the thing in his hand as if he’d never seen it before. ‘She’d apparently been treating her off and on to doses of croton oil.’
‘Doses of – Good grief, so that was it? I remember her asking about the stuff.’ His hand went to his head. He looked sick and shaken. ‘But why? I don’t get it. That stuff – good God – what could she hope to gain?’
‘A dowry,’ said Grafton dryly. ‘Oh, she didn’t mean to kill her, that was ignorance. She was just clever enough to choose the times when I was away. I admit it never entered my head – it was one of those simple, stupid schemes one might expect from that mentality – she wanted the old lady periodically ill and helpless so that she could nurse her through it with the sort of devotion that sticks out a mile and gets its due reward. Which it did.’
He was watching the younger man as he spoke. Lethman said nothing. You can always tell when someone is thinking back, remembering. He was biting his lip, his face still shocked and sick-looking. Behind the slack lines and pin-pupilled eyes of the addict I thought I could see the ghost of the pleasant-faced boy who had been pulled into Henry Grafton’s orbit. And I thought I saw, too, the ghost – hastily suppressed with shame – of a boy relieved of a burden.
Grafton saw it, too. ‘Oh, yes, there were rewards. You know how lavish the Lady could be at times. I gather that most of her pickings are being kept for her by her family in the village. As I said, a dowry.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I broke in, ‘cover her face and let’s get out of here before I’m sick.’
Grafton gave me a look, and then obeyed me, stooping over the thing on the floor to pull a greasy, merciful fold of the pretty silk across. John Lethman turned abruptly away, dragging me with him towards the stairs. I went, only too willingly. As we reached the top and he pulled the arras back. Grafton came out of the storeroom below, shutting the door behind him, then as an afterthought pushed it open again, and flung the goad back inside. I heard it go clattering down on the floor, then the door slammed again, finally, on the dreadful little room.
The Prince’s Divan was brilliantly lit tonight. The usual lamp stood on the covered fountain which served as a table in the middle of the lower room, other lamps burned in niches by the door, and from a bracket high in the wall a double cresset gave a smoky red light. As Grafton followed us through and the arras swung shut behind him, the cresset blew and guttered in the draught, sending grotesque shadows reeling up the walls.
‘For Christ’s sake hang on to the girl.’ His voice was harsh but controlled. It seemed he was back in charge. ‘If you let her go we’ll both be in the can. God knows I’m sorry about what happened, John – it’s perfectly true that Halide killed the old woman and landed us both in this, but do you seriously imagine I’d have hit her if she hadn’t gone for me with a knife? The way I see it, we’d better get out of the jam we’re in before we start calling the odds over this. So snap out of it, and let’s get back on the job. One thing, I suppose you know what’ll happen if Nasirulla gets wind of it? We’ll have to shift the body now, and think up some way of stalling him off if he asks where she is. Christ—’ he sounded suddenly, viciously irritable – ‘Stop gawping at me! What’s done’s done, and you can’t pretend you won’t be damned grateful to me when you’re free as air and with money to burn and no dusky charmer wound round your neck like a goddamned snake! And for a start, you can get that girl under lock and key – and hurry up, she looks as if she’s going to pass out on us. Shove her in the lock-up with the boy, there isn’t long to go.’
It was quite true that I wasn’t feeling too good. Still held by John Lethman, I had got as far as the red lacquer chair, but as soon as he let go of my arm I felt my knees give way, and collapsed into it, fighting back the feeling of icy nausea that splashed over me again and again, alternating with drenching heat. Through the waves of goose-pimpling sickness I was aware of a sharp and urgent exchange of words going on over my head. I didn’t catch what John Lethman said, but Grafton’s reaction was violent.
‘What? What the devil do you mean?’
‘I was coming to tell you. The boy’s out.’
‘That’s not possible!’
‘It’s true. He’s out. Gone. No sign.’
I surfaced for a moment. ‘Bully for Charles,’ I said.
‘And,’ said John Lethman, ‘he’ll be back here in an hour or two with every damned flic he can drum up.’
‘Back here?’ Grafton took him up like lightning. ‘You mean out – he’s right outside?’
‘He must be. I found Jassim knocked out, and the main gate open. Of course he didn’t know we had the girl here, or—’
‘You bloody fool! And you’ve been wasting time!’ This, it seemed, was how Halide’s death could now be classed. ‘How long has he been gone?’
‘Not long, I guess. He’d knocked over his water-jug, and the footprints he’d left from treading in it were still wet when I came to find you.’
‘Get the dogs out,’ snapped Grafton. ‘Go on, get them now. He’ll be making for the village, he won’t have got far. They’ll catch him easily enough, and you can tell Nasirulla it doesn’t matter how they pull him down as long as they do it.’
‘They probably won’t touch him. Don’t you remember I told you—?’
‘What the hell does that matter? Can’t you see, the point is, kill two birds with one stone – get Nasirulla away from the place with the hounds, while we clear up down below. The dogs’ll find the boy all right, and if Nasirulla takes a gun … He’s to be stopped, do you hear me? I suppose Jassim’s back on his feet again? Go on, man, hurry, leave this silly bitch, I’ll deal with her. And get back here as fast as you can and help me with the job below stairs.’
I made a grab at John Lethman’s sleeve as he turned to go.
‘Don’t leave me with that little swine, for goodness’ sake! Can’t you see he’s gone overboard? Halide, and now Charles … and you – can’t you see you haven’t a chance?’ I gripped his arm, shaking it. It was like pleading with a zombie. ‘Look, I know you’ve only been doing as he made you! You’d nothing to do with Halide’s death! If you let Charles go, and get me out of here, I swear I’ll stand up for you and tell them—’
‘Get,’ said Grafton, and John Lethman pulled himself free and went.
Grafton jerked his head at me. ‘Come on. Get going.’
‘Where to?’
‘
Back to your cage, my girl.’
I gripped the arms of my chair until the lacquer scored my palms. ‘Not back in there with her?’
‘By no means, we’ll be busy there, didn’t you hear? You can have the official dungeon this time, but don’t think you’ll get out of it, even if your cousin did.’
I began to get slowly to my feet, helping myself by the chair arms. The swimming nausea had cleared and I was steady enough, but I still can’t have looked much to reckon with, for he had obviously dismissed me from a mind leaping ahead to the next – and major – move.
‘Come on, don’t waste my time. Get moving.’
I got moving. I shoved myself suddenly upright, and the heavy chair away from me with a jerk that sent it skating across the marble tiles between Grafton and myself. I ran the other way, towards the bed. Up the steps, across the dais, then I jumped on to the foot of the bed itself and yanked the rifle down from the wall.
I swung round, unsteady on the soft bed, bracing my shoulders against the wall, and had the thing levelled at his midriff before he had done more than take three strides after me.
I had no idea if the gun were loaded. I thought it probably wasn’t, but Henry Grafton might not be sure. And you have to be very sure indeed to risk outfacing a gun. You only call a gun’s bluff once.
He checked, as I had known he would, ‘Put that damned thing down, it isn’t loaded.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
Outside, suddenly, the hounds bayed wildly from the court where Nasirulla was presumably loosing them in the fond hope that they would pull Charles down. I laughed in Henry Grafton’s face.
‘Then come and get me,’ I invited.
He didn’t move. I laughed again, and keeping the rifle at the ready, put out a hand to the wall to steady myself as I stepped down from the bed.
And suddenly there it was again, the wave of heat, the choking nausea, the sweat and the stopped breathing. I groped for a fold of the arras and hung on, dimly aware of the rifle sinking forgotten to the trail, of Grafton hesitating momentarily before taking a step towards me, of the baying of the dogs wild and loud, of someone shouting.
