Dear Illusion: Collected Stories

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Why is that?’

  But here once more I found there was no more progress to be made. I revolved in my mind this interview, together with other matters, through an agreeable luncheon and the earlier part of a confoundedly sultry afternoon. Half-past four found me in the drawing-room taking tea with my hostess.

  ‘We won’t wait for Harry,’ said she. ‘He often misses tea altogether.’

  ‘Where is Sir Harry at this moment?’

  ‘At the stables. He should be safe enough there.’

  ‘I see there is a fourth cup.’

  ‘In case Miles should decide to join us.’

  ‘But you make no provision for Captain Bradshaw.’

  ‘Ah, he never takes tea. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with his afternoon walk. Jack Bradshaw is a very serious man.’

  ‘He is certainly very serious about you, Lady Fairfax.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s in love with you, as you know. I learned it last night, at dinner. You showed signs of strong fear; Bradshaw had not seen what it was that had frightened you, but he could tell its direction from your gaze, and at once – before I was on my feet, and I moved quickly – interposed himself between you and the source of danger. Such speed comes from instinct founded on deep emotion, not from the conscious part of the mind.’

  The lady was not indignant, nor did she affect disbelief or surprise. I was sufficiently emboldened by this further evidence of her sagacity to inquire if I might go further in plain speaking.

  ‘We shall make no progress if we allow ourselves to be circumscribed by false notions of delicacy,’ she replied.

  ‘Very well. Remember that I am discussing remote contingencies, nothing more. Now – if I wanted to procure Sir Harry’s demise, when should I best make my attempt?’

  ‘When his life had recently been threatened by a convicted felon.’

  ‘Just so. What of my motive?’

  ‘We know of one possibility, that your victim stands between you and the object of your passion. No doubt there are others.’

  ‘Certainly. Perhaps I’m the prey of a special kind of envy, or a sense that Fortune has been unjust to me.’

  ‘I follow you.’

  ‘Or again I may feel that my honour has been slighted so grievously that only death can redress the wrong.’

  ‘Do you call that plain speaking, Dr Watson?’ was a question never answered, for at that moment the tea-cup in that graceful hand shattered into fragments and the crack of a rifle was heard from the nearer distance. Bidding Lady Fairfax lie down, I hastened out through the open French windows and searched the adjacent shrubbery, but with no result. On my return to the house, I found the baronet with his arms about his wife, who was decidedly less shocked than many young women would have been after such an experience. After satisfying myself that she needed none of my professional care, I searched for the bullet that had passed between us and eventually retrieved it from the corner where it had ricocheted after hitting the back wall. This contact had somewhat deformed it, but I was soon satisfied that it had come from the Rossi-Charles rifle.

  By now, Miles Fairfax had arrived from his sitting-room on the first floor, unaware, on his account, of anything amiss until summoned by a servant. Had he not heard the shot? He had indeed heard a shot, but had taken it for one more of the hundreds fired in the vicinity every year for peaceful purposes. Bradshaw appeared a little later, back, he declared, from his walk, and evidently much agitated at the narrowness of Lady Fairfax’s escape.

  He clutched his forehead wildly. ‘In Heaven’s name, what lunatic would seek to harm so innocent a creature?’ he cried.

  ‘Oh, I think it must have been to me that harm was intended, Jack,’ said Sir Harry. ‘Consider where Watson was sitting. From any distance, it would have been perfectly possible to mistake him for me.’

  ‘Harry,’ said his wife in tones of resolve, ‘there must be no shoot tomorrow. I forbid it.’

  ‘What shoot is this?’ I asked.

  ‘A very modest affair, Doctor,’ returned Sir Harry. ‘We intend to do no more than clear some of the pigeons from the east wood. A few people from round about will be joining us.’

  ‘And is your intention known in the district?’

  ‘Well, it is our yearly custom. I suppose it must be known.’

  ‘Don’t go, dearest,’ implored the lady. ‘Let the others do as they please, but you remain behind.’

  I took it upon myself to intervene. ‘My dear Lady Fairfax,’ said I, ‘Sir Harry must be there. It’s our best chance. We must bring Black Ralph into the open and end this menace. I will be responsible for your husband’s safety.’

  And, with the support of Bradshaw and, unexpectedly, that of Miles Fairfax, I carried the day. Later I made some preparations with which I will not weary the reader, and, in common with the rest of the household, retired early. I was drifting off to sleep when, just as on the previous night, I heard the door above me shut. In an instant I was fully awake. The voices began again, but with the immediate difference that the man was unmistakably Sir Harry Fairfax, speaking with a measured harshness that chilled the blood. I caught a phrase here and there – ‘castigation of sin’ and ‘suffer condign punishment’. They were enough to recall to me what hitherto the name of Fairfax and the sight of the fiendish representation in the dining-room had failed to do. It had been an eighteenth-century occupant of that baronetcy, one Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had conducted nameless rites in this very house, subjecting his own wife to indignities which I cannot set down here. At that moment I heard from upstairs the voice of the present Lady Fairfax raised in piteous entreaty and then what could have been nothing but the savage crack of a whip. A stifled scream followed.

  I could hesitate no longer. Lighting a candle, I took my revolver from its hiding-place at the bottom of my travelling-bag, threw on a dressing-gown and made for the upper storey. Within seconds I had found the room I sought and paused outside it before committing myself.

  After a moment, Sir Harry’s voice, its unnatural harshness intensified, spoke from beyond the closed door. ‘Now, I say, you shall make an act of contrition!’ There was another pause, and then the voice came again. ‘Ah. So you remain, devil. You are incorporate with the body you inhabit. You and she are one flesh. Then as one flesh shall you suffer chastisement!’

  With the whiplash ringing in my ears I burst in and confronted two figures garbed after the fashion of a hundred years before. Emily Fairfax wore a gown of black bombazine; he who must be her husband was unrecognizable by reason of the red velvet mask that, apart from eye-holes, covered all his face above the mouth. That mouth was now open in consternation.

  ‘Enough, Fairfax, enough!’ I cried. ‘What is this hideous mummery? These, I suppose, were the practices of your accursed ancestor.’

  There was a moment of complete silence before the man removed his mask. When he had done so, his face wore an expression of what might have been taken for friendly concern. ‘I’m truly sorry, Doctor,’ he said in his normal tones. ‘We have troubled your rest. I can’t think how I came to forget that your room was beneath this one.’

  ‘Thank Heaven you did forget,’ said I. ‘What is to be done with you, you vile creature? I am utterly staggered.’

  At this Lady Fairfax broke into sudden laughter. ‘That is altogether understandable,’ said she. ‘My dear Dr Watson, you have been scandalously put upon. How am I to explain? Perhaps I may show you this.’

  She handed me a tattered volume on whose cover I made out the legend, ‘Plays of Terror and the Macabre’. I turned over its pages with a dawning comprehension which became complete when I reached, set out in cold print, the very words I had just heard Sir Harry pronounce. ‘You are acting’, was the best I could find to say.

  ‘Correct, my dear fellow,’ smiled the dreadful inquisitor of a minute before, cracking his whip against a battered escritoire – I saw now that the room was half full of such items of discarded furnit
ure. ‘I think I told you how my poor wife misses the theatre, and this sort of tomfoolery was the best we could devise by way of a substitute.’

  ‘Last night,’ I said feebly – ‘last night I heard Lady Fairfax protesting in a strain I could have sworn held nothing simulated.’

  ‘Quite true,’ said the lady pleasantly; ‘last night I was tired after my travels, too tired for this sport.’

  ‘I will interrupt you no longer,’ I declared, and brushing aside the apologies of both, took myself out of that room as fast as I could. Doubtless I had made a fool of myself, but I was saved from the self-regarding shame that that thought usually brings by commiseration towards Lady Fairfax. Nobody could have failed to see that her object that night had been, not entertainment, but distraction from thought of what the next day might hold in store.

  It was a day that began auspiciously enough, with a blue sky faintly veiled in mist, so often the prelude to a blazing noon. By eleven o’clock the shooting-party was on its way towards the wood. Besides myself, it included the Fairfax brothers and half a dozen neighbours, but not Captain Bradshaw, whom I had just heard explaining to a bewhiskered farmer that the recurrence of a bowel complaint, the effect of a germ picked up in India, forbade him to attend. Happening to catch my eye as he said this, he had hastily looked away, and with reason; I have never met a worse liar. The only servant present was a ruddy-cheeked youth carrying a rattle to put up the birds.

  The sun was hot and high as we moved into the shadows of the wood, where there were many small noises. Almost at once Miles Fairfax stumbled at some irregularity of the ground, and but for my out-thrust arm might have fallen.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  He hobbled a pace or two. ‘My damned ankle. I seem to have twisted it.’

  ‘Best let me have a look.’

  This natural suggestion seemed to fill him with wrath. ‘I haven’t broken my leg, curse it!’ he cried. ‘I don’t need surgery! I’ll be all right directly and will catch you up. Go on, all of you. Go on!’

  It seemed we had no choice but to do as we were told. Presently the rattle sounded, flocks of pigeons took to the air and the guns blazed merrily away. I held my fire, maintaining a keen look-out and staying as close to Sir Harry as I could without forming one target with him. The party trod steadily on, deeper into the wood. I caught various movements among foliage, but none were of human agency. I had begun to fear, not what might happen, but that nothing would, when we reached a clearing some seventy yards across. At once there came the smart crack of a rifle-shot and Sir Harry cried out and fell. I was thunderstruck, but after a glance at the baronet’s prostrate form I shouted to the party that they should lie flat and keep their heads down. They obeyed with alacrity. Another shot sounded, but the bullet went wild. I faced in the direction from which it had come and walked slowly forward.

  ‘Aim here,’ I called, indicating my chest. ‘Here.’

  A third report followed; I heard the round buzzing through the air ten feet above my head. The fourth and fifth attempts were no better. When I had gone some twenty yards there was a receding flurry in the bushes. I followed at a run, but still had seen nothing when two shots rang out almost together and a howl of pain followed. Within a minute I had found what I sought – Bradshaw and Carlos each covering with a rifle the prostrate form of Black Ralph.

  ‘Well done, lads,’ said I, grasping each by the arm, then turned my attention to the would-be assassin. My first good look at the scoundrel showed him to be of simous and ape-like appearance, and there was something animal in the way he whimpered over his injury. This was nothing much; a bullet had creased his knee-cap, temporarily incapacitating him but not, which would have been the case had it struck nearer, crippling him for life. All in all he was infernally lucky.

  ‘Whose shot was it?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not certain,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘I am certain,’ said the Spaniard with a gallant bow. ‘It was yours, Captain. Most brilliant, with a moving target at that range. And now you may leave it to me to deliver to the authorities this piece of filth.’

  Sir Harry’s wound was lighter – a gash in the upper arm which had not bled excessively. When I reached him, he was being tenderly comforted by his brother Miles, whose whole nature seemed transformed, and who gave me such a look, compounded of remorse for past conduct and a firm resolve for the future, as I shall never forget. On our return to Darkwater Hall, the wife’s joy at her husband’s safe homecoming affected us all, notably Bradshaw. I received so much praise for my supposed courage in exposing myself to Black Ralph’s fire that I was forced at last to explain that it was undeserved.

  ‘The rifle is the key,’ said I, the recovered weapon in my hand. ‘Like all its fellows, it’s inaccurate. So when it was stolen I knew the culprit was someone ignorant of firearms. Then, when your tea-cup flew to pieces yesterday, Lady Fairfax, I knew more. To get a bullet out of this thingumbob between you and me at something like eighty yards the firer must be either a brilliant shot with many hours of practice behind him – impossible – or a very bad shot with the luck of the devil, one who had the luck of the devil again an hour ago; that staggered me, I must say. So you see, while Black Ralph was aiming at my chest I was safe. If he had just let fly at random he might conceivably have hit me.’

  Bradshaw seemed dissatisfied. ‘But even the most inaccurate weapon in the world is dangerous at short range,’ he observed.

  ‘Indeed it is. That was why I kept my distance till there were no more shots in the locker. But of course I knew who was the villain of the piece within minutes of arriving in the house, despite all the questions I asked.’

  ‘By deduction?’ asked Miles Fairfax with a friendly smile.

  ‘Certainly not. I knew Black Ralph was a criminal, one glimpse of him was enough to show me he was a dangerous one, and everybody else I saw was simply incapable of such a monstrous deed as the one he tried to perpetrate today. It was obvious. And I thank God for that fact. In a case of the least difficulty I should have been the sorriest of substitutes for Sherlock Holmes.’

  Accompanied by Bradshaw, who told me he felt he had vegetated too long, I caught the evening train for London, where we supped pleasantly at the Savoy.

  If I were recording here one of Holmes’s adventures I should lay down my pen at this point, but since I mean to ensure that nobody shall see this account until fifty years after my death, I will take leave to say a little more.

  I have been less than frank with the reader. By this I do not merely mean to confess that, in this narrative as in others, I have done what Holmes himself once accused me of doing and concealed ‘links in the chain’ – the scheme I devised with Bradshaw and Carlos for apprehending Black Ralph is the most glaring example – in order to make a better story, though I hope the finale thus produced is not ‘meretricious’. Nor do I mean to discuss the view, put forward by a Viennese colleague to whom I recently recounted the outline of this story, that Sir Harry Fairfax’s amateur theatricals might have been something other than what I had taken them to be, and in some abstruse way – which I could not wholly follow – connected with his failure to produce an heir. But it is all too certain that he was still childless when, some ten years after the Black Ralph affair, he met his death in a riding accident, leaving his brother to inherit with sorrow the baronetcy and estates he had once so ardently coveted.

  Enough of that. What I have to reveal is of another order altogether. The interview with Dolores, as set out above, is a lie. She did indeed impute to Carlos a groundless jealousy of Sir Harry. But the manner of this, and its circumstances, were wholly different from what I have implied. The two of us were in my bed. Even in these easy-going days of the third decade of the twentieth century I would not care to publish such a confession. I dare hope that the reader of the 1970s will find it unexceptionable; a vigorous bachelor of three-and-thirty, such as I then was, a beautiful and passionate girl, and an opportunity – is there anything there
to outrage delicacy?

  Dolores, what was it in you, or in me, or in both of us that brought it about that in your arms I experienced a joy more intense and more exquisite than any before or since? Was it that we were so different from each other or that we shared a strange communion of spirit? Was it the season? Was it – contrary to appearance – the place? To me, that is the real Darkwater Hall mystery, as impenetrable and as wonderful now as it was then, forty years ago.

  John H. Watson, MD

  Bournemouth

  April 1925

  THE HOUSE ON THE HEADLAND

  I had done myself pretty well that evening in the coffee-room at the Irving. After a couple of ounces of caviare, I had enjoyed a superb grouse and wound up with a hot-house nectarine, sharing a bottle of the ’26 Aloxe with my neighbour. Others at the common table, I had noticed, were in the same mood. In those fateful August days, there were those of us who were not at all sure where we should be a month later, nor even that the Irving would still be in existence. For the moment, however, as the conversation buzzed under that magnificent ceiling, all seemed cheerful and reassuring.

  As we sat over a glass of vintage port in the members’ lounge, I mentioned this air of ease to my table-companion. In truth he was much more than that; he was and is one of my closest friends. Although he plays only a brief part in this story, I must say something of him. His name is Roger Harvey, his age the same as mine – forty – and his employment somewhere in the Overseas Office, somewhere very remote from my own corner of that institution, somewhere he has never spoken of, even to such as myself. My obvious deductions were shortly to be confirmed.

  He nodded agreement with my remark. ‘Most of them still can’t really believe it’s coming, or can’t take it in.’

  ‘But it is?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, with a look I knew well. It meant that he was certain, but was not to be asked the grounds of his certainty.

  ‘Shall you be staying in Whitehall?’