Gently Where She Lay

by Alan Hunter

  ‘I told you, remember? Mixed motives.’

  ‘Yes. But what were they?’

  ‘Those I gave you. Plus some thoughts of suicide. And a need for time.’

  I returned down the room. I think he was smiling at me, but the light was too poor to be certain. Facing me, of course: sitting easy and relaxed in one of the two big club-armchairs.

  ‘This is difficult to phrase. To the best of my knowledge, you are a man unconnected with Mrs Selly. You are under no sort of suspicion, nor are you likely to be. Yet I think you are trying to tell me you killed her. Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed softly. ‘I thought you were never going to ask me.’

  ‘Did you need asking?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t prove it. Neither can you.’

  I moved away again. There was a chair at the studio end, a cane-bottomed affair with flimsy legs. It was cluttered with books. I shifted them to the picture-racks and sat down, facing the unfinished picture. In the shadows I had left a match flared: Reymerston lighting a cigarette. His handsome face showed once, twice, then became a shape in the darkness.

  ‘You are telling me there is no material proof?’

  The cigarette glowed. ‘There has been none since Thursday. On Thursday, at the jetty, you could have solved this case. It needed only a touch on my shoulder.’

  ‘You had the other piece of the lead?’

  ‘It was in my pocket. I was about to throw it in the water. But then I saw you. Then the dog. It was the most frightening moment of my life.’

  ‘Did you think I suspected you?’

  ‘I thought you knew. I recognised you from your picture in the local. You’d only just arrived: yet here you were, coming unhesitatingly towards me. In some superhuman way you were on to me. Any attempt to evade you would be futile. Then right on cue came that miserable dog with its bit of lead, pointing me out to you.’ He paused, drawing smoke. ‘How can I describe it? I felt the old superstition had suddenly confounded me. I was the man of blood who couldn’t hide, whom even the stones and dumb beasts would betray. I was petrified.’

  ‘Yet you helped me to try to catch the dog.’

  ‘What else could I do, at that moment? I was guilty, it was ringing to the high heaven. All that remained was a decent submission. So I gave you a hand. But the dog fell in, and that part of the proof was missing. Also, it showed the Erinnyes could slip, that perhaps the time of truth was not yet. At least I could delay it: I could take time to think, decide whether I wanted to face it or not. That was my state of mind when I jumped. I had no immediate thought of evading the issue.’

  ‘When had you?’

  ‘Well . . . fairly soon afterwards! A jump in the sea is a great aid to clear thinking. By the time you had stopped shouting and gone for help, I was beginning to realise I might have panicked for nothing.’

  ‘So you let the dog sink.’

  ‘The dog was lost anyway. I could never have got him back to shore. All I had to do was get rid of my piece of lead, which I promptly did. Then the proof was gone.’

  I stared hard at the unfinished painting. ‘And you’ve waited till now to tell me this?’

  ‘Yes – I had to! Can’t you see that? Even now there’s a danger you may not believe me.’ He stabbed out the cigarette, making the cups clink. ‘Try to put yourself in my position. I knew straight away, while I was still in the water, that sooner or later I’d have to tell you about it. That was why I followed you into the coffee-room yesterday. But Major Rede got in first. And it was easy to see, from the way you were handling him, that you had some pretty good grounds for suspicion. So what would you have thought if I’d pitched in then, with a rather strange tale – and no proof? Either that I was trying to take the heat off the Major, or that I was a crackpot after a cheap thrill. And I would have been discredited. It would have been no use now my reiterating my confession. I simply had to wait until you’d rubbed your nose in it, and found your guts didn’t agree with your head.’

  ‘Even though it led to the destruction of innocent people?’

  ‘Can you lay that entirely at my door? Is the Major so blameless – and his niece? And don’t you share a little of the responsibility? I’ll accept mine. I’m appalled by what’s happened. I’m guilty of not facing up to it on Thursday. But my silence wasn’t what sent you after the Major and Pamela – they’d meddled with pitch, and you saw it on their hands. And you – if your guts are so sensitive, why have you laid the Major’s head on the block?’

  I moved uneasily on the spindly chair. ‘But you’re claiming the prime guilt is yours. None of this other would have happened if Vivienne Selly were still alive.’

  ‘But am I guilty? And guilty of what?’

  ‘You have admitted killing Mrs Selly.’

  ‘I know. I did. But what does it mean? That’s the question I haven’t begun to settle.’

  I heard him move rapidly: another cigarette. I kept my face turned to the picture. The flicker of flame picked up the colours. Then they greyed again in the twilight.

  ‘Perhaps I can help you. Isn’t your real name Aston?’

  The match snapped, was dropped in a saucer.

  ‘Reginald Aston.’

  ‘Late of Aplan, Rayner?’

  ‘Chief Accountant to them for seven years.’

  ‘And Mrs Selly also worked for that firm?’

  The cigarette glowed: I could see him smiling. ‘You don’t disappoint me. You did check up on Selly. Yes, I understand Mrs Selly once worked in my department.’

  ‘You understand?’

  ‘She told me herself. That was what brought her here Tuesday evening. She had an idea it was worth money to me to hide my identity from the police.’

  ‘And wasn’t it?’

  ‘None whatever. That was her tragic mistake.’

  ‘You had no connection with the missing money?’

  ‘Oh yes. But nothing provable.’ He laughed wryly. ‘I’m one of those people who seem able to commit perfect crimes. I planned my first one like a Napoleon. The second just happened, but it was equally foolproof.’

  ‘Where is the money now?’

  ‘In Zurich.’

  ‘You were responsible for the whole amount?’

  ‘A quarter of a million. You have to think big in these days of galloping inflation. I needed to be getting on with my painting and I had no conscience about robbing a firm like Aplan, Rayner. Thalidomide broke them, but it was only one of the products they were recklessly exploiting. I siphoned the funds off in easy stages. The real problem was finding an excuse to resign. Then my wife – who loathed me – had a frightful accident, and there was the solution handed to me. I’d edited the books to point to Joe Rayner – whose back was broad enough, believe me – but being new to crime, I took the added precaution of disappearing and changing my name. Quite needlessly, as it turned out. But it gave ideas to poor Mrs Selly.’

  ‘Could you be so certain that she couldn’t betray you?’

  ‘Was there ever a warrant for my arrest?’

  ‘One might have been waiting.’

  ‘But was there?’

  I hunched a shoulder. He’d done his work well.

  ‘She couldn’t harm me. I made it plain to her, and she didn’t argue for long. It was like that time on the beach over again, she wasn’t really expecting to turn up trumps. Up to that point, a little sick comedy which should have ended with her trailing off home. Only she didn’t, she played another scene. And my God, I wish I knew the reason why.’

  He stubbed out his second cigarette, half-smoked. I kept my eyes from him.

  ‘You’d better tell me about it.’

  ‘I was painting,’ Reymerston said. ‘Painting that picture. And you’ve every reason to sit staring at it. It’s all wrapped up with what went on here, a symbolic map of the experience. I’d begun it before she arrived. I continued it during and after the affair. I’ll probably destroy it; I don’t k
now. There may be a greater therapy in finishing it.’

  He rose and went to the switches by the door. A fluorescent tube lit above me. The picture ignited. Every imaginable colour had been ‘pointed’ in the fluted swell of the long line of breakers. The sky and the shore were not yet begun, were merely ghosted in with rubs of charcoal. But the sea was near-perfect. You could feel it and smell it, hear the deep roar of its successive plunges.

  ‘I think you’ll finish it – given the chance.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can bear to let it exist.’

  ‘The conception had nothing to do with Mrs Selly.’

  He chucked his head sceptically and returned to his seat.

  ‘The bell rang at about a quarter to nine. She was waiting on the step with her dog. Dressed and made up and heavily scented. My first thought was she’d come to seduce me. But no. She had business to talk, something to do with several years ago. I could pretty well guess what it was, so I let her in. She left her dog tied to the rail.’

  ‘How much did she ask for?’

  ‘Five thousand.’

  ‘And that was to have been a business loan?’

  Reymerston checked. ‘She’d tried it before, had she?’

  I spread my hand. ‘You can guess where.’

  He shook his head. ‘The poor little bitch. And it wouldn’t have hurt me to shell out. But she tried to use blackmail, that was what stuck, and I could see she wasn’t pinning very many hopes to it. Just a try-on. So that’s how I treated it; didn’t even lose my temper. And she wept in a quiet, helpless sort of way; no fight at all, simply accepting it. I tried to get rid of her. She ignored me. I offered her a drink. She wouldn’t have one. It was completely exasperating. At last I left her in here and went out to the kitchen to make coffee.’

  ‘At what time would that be?’

  ‘Around nine-thirty. I switched on the light as I went out.’

  ‘Where was she sitting?’

  ‘In one of these chairs. But nobody could have seen her from out there.’

  He motioned to the windows. Light from the room fell on the wild-run shrubs in the garden. From the room the shrubs hid the view of the Common: ergo, from the Common they hid the view of the room.

  ‘Was she still sitting in the chair when you returned?’

  Reymerston hesitated. ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘She wasn’t in here at all. I thought for a moment she’d slipped out.’

  ‘But she hadn’t?’

  ‘No. I called her name. I heard her calling back, “I’m up here”. From upstairs. So I put down the coffee and went upstairs looking for her.’ He got up quickly and went to stand at the window. ‘She was in the bedroom. My room. Stripped. She’d pulled down the bedclothes and was lying naked on the sheet. Just the electric stove burning, the room lit with a red glow. Her clothes folded and placed on a chair. And her heavy eyes staring at me.’ He shuddered.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She didn’t speak; she didn’t need to. Lying there like a debased Velásquez for me to shut the door and have her. Obscenely: trying to turn me on. Her eyes dead, without expression. Just watching me: feline. It was the eyes that truly shocked me.’

  ‘You felt disgust.’

  ‘More like shock. I’ve been trying to analyse it ever since. When I walked through that door and saw her, saw her eyes, it seemed to stun me. I was there, yet I wasn’t there, as though her eyes were splitting me in two: the presence of myself, in a sort of paralysis, and my physical being: quite separate. Look—’ he turned to me appealingly – ‘you must have met cases like this before. People have tried to tell you about it. A kind of temporary schizophrenia.’

  ‘Do you mean a black-out?’

  ‘Not a black-out! I remember vividly what happened. Only I couldn’t stop it. I was like an automaton, with my real self separate, helpless, watching. And she was doing it to me, that’s what I felt; I was a puppet being manipulated. I’m not trying to excuse myself – please believe that! But I need to understand, to make you understand.’

  ‘Tell me the rest.’

  He turned from me again. ‘The previous day I had bought a new mattress. It came packed in a thick polythene bag, and the bag was still lying on a chest in the bedroom. I got it and went to her. She was lying on her back with her arms straight down beside her. I placed it over her up to her chin and tucked it in underneath her. She didn’t resist, in fact she helped me. Perhaps thought it was some sort of kink I had. Then I took the second pillow and placed it over her face and put gentle pressure on it.’

  ‘Didn’t she struggle then?’

  ‘Never once. Though of course she was pinioned by the bag. She just moved very slightly, as though making herself comfortable, and after that it was over.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Say ten seconds.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  He nodded. ‘I removed the pillow. I thought she was foxing. I had no clear idea that I’d been killing her. Is heart-failure possible?’

  I shook my head. The P.M. report had been specific about the cause of death.

  ‘Yet she died so quickly. So very quickly.’

  Yes . . . and why not?

  ‘Just go on.’

  He dropped into his chair again, but facing the books, not me. ‘I came back down here. I didn’t know what to think. For a time, I couldn’t believe she was dead. You see, I’d become myself again. The split phase was over directly. And then it was too ludicrous. I hadn’t meant to kill her. It was all like some strange game.’

  ‘You went on with your painting?’

  ‘Exactly. As though I’d never been interrupted. Expecting her to come down any minute for a cup of coffee: it was still hot. But she didn’t come, so I went back up again, and there she lay, quite dead. So I had to believe it then, though still I couldn’t feel I was responsible. Yet it was mine, that responsibility. I could go on painting, but I couldn’t dodge it. Though I painted like an angel, there she was: my sin at my door. By then it would be something after eleven. I knew the tide was no use to me. I didn’t fancy that, anyway – she wasn’t dead yet, in my imagination. It would have to be the Common, the furthest end, which once I’d explored with Marianne. I knew of the little grove. She could lie in that. It seemed a fitting place for the wretched woman. So I painted on till past midnight: the foam of that breaker in the foreground. Then I went up and packed her body in the bag and took it and her clothes down to my car.’

  ‘And the dog – still tied to the rail?’

  ‘Yes. The dog gave me a scare. I’d forgotten him. When I came out with the body, he jumped up and began wagging his tail.’

  ‘No other reaction?’

  ‘None. I think the plastic bag must have fooled him. Rather a stupid dog. He was gone by the time I returned from the Common.’

  ‘What route did you take from here?’

  ‘I drove down the loke and to the harbour road.’

  ‘Not directly on to the Common?’

  ‘I decided against that. It involved driving past the row of villas. Nobody would notice a late car in the streets, but one passing the villas would be unusual. I was quite cool then, judging the risks; the business of disposal was rather matter-of-fact.’

  ‘And you met nobody.’

  ‘Not a soul. There was just me and the car, and her in the boot. I drove off the road at the pavilion and steered as straight as I could for the trees. When I got there I parked the car so the headlights lit up the grove. Then I unloaded her: all shockingly impersonal; I think her nudity had something to do with it. She was stiffening a bit, but her arms were still limp, so I made an attempt to lay her out. The expression on her face was wholly pacific, quite different to what it had been in life. I placed her in the exact centre of the grove with the clothes and the handbag at her head. The bad moment came when I had to leave her. Suddenly, then, I wanted to weep.’

  ‘You returned by the same way?’r />
  He nodded dully. ‘I wasn’t quite so calm, coming back. But the devil looked after me, as usual, and I got back without incident. Then I had to clear up: the sheet, the pillow-cases, everything and anything she might have touched. I sent the linen to the laundry next day, though in fact there were no emissions from the body. I folded the plastic bag into a small package and sealed it with tape and dropped it from the jetty. The bit of lead I missed until two days later: but you know how I got rid of that.’

  ‘What about the car?’

  ‘Nothing there. She was completely enclosed in the bag.’

  ‘Did you check the underside?’

  ‘Why bother? Heath-rubbish can come from anywhere.’ He gave me a long, suddenly anxious look. ‘You are believing me, aren’t you?’

  I stared back. ‘Yes, I’m believing you. But you’ve wiped the slate pretty clean.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter if you believe me.’

  ‘But it will matter to the Public Prosecutor.’

  ‘The Public Prosecutor . . . ?’

  ‘He’s the man who will ultimately deal with your case.’

  Reymerston paused, his eyes steady, curious. ‘But there’ll be no question of that,’ he said.

  ‘I think there will.’

  His head shook firmly. ‘No. I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. What I’ve been telling you is for your information and to prevent a miscarriage of justice. That’s all. I’m not confessing. Officially, I can be of no assistance.’

  I rose from the chair and went to pour myself a cup of the stone-cold coffee. Reymerston watched me. He was quite relaxed: the old, half-wistful smile was in his eyes. I drank the tart, gritty stuff and stared at the books over his head. Expensive books; I noticed a couple that I had on my shelves at home.

  ‘This is your decision, your considered decision?’

  He bowed his head. ‘Deliberate and considered.’

  ‘It won’t be easy for you.’

  ‘I understand that. You can scarcely let the matter drop.’

  ‘We’ll be bound to make a thorough investigation. And there’s also the matter of the embezzlement. The action we take won’t be kept secret. You’ll receive attention from the press.’

  ‘Understood.’