Farmen entered. “What a glorious thing must be a victory, sir. The greatest tragedy in the world, my Lord, except a defeat.”
“You go and explain that to the judge,” said Tarnton dryly.
“Not on your nelly. If I know anything about old Ice-Blood, he’s trying to decide whether the jury should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, or really punished severely.”
“A trifle energetic in showing his feelings, wasn’t he, Edward?”
“Energetic? He practically jailed everyone in sight for contempt of court.”
“If I ever hand out medals for courage, remind me to give the first one to the Breslow woman. She knew she was fighting impossible odds, yet she went on to win. Our Mr. Leithan’s a damned lucky man.”
“I usually go for blondes.”
“I know. I’ve had the misfortune to be introduced to one of them.” Tarnton took off his wing collar and fitted it into his wig box together with his wig and tabs.
“Thanks! You know something, if Mrs. Breslow were free I reckon I’d change my tastes. Not a blood pressure soarer, but she’s certainly something special.”
Alliter entered the room and he heard the last few words. “What peerless woman is this?”
“The incomparable Mrs. Breslow,” replied Tarnton, and hoped for signs of annoyance.
Alliter smiled blandly. “Quite a girl, but rather silly.”
“Silly?” asked Farmen.
“Successful violence breeds a train that travels on tracks which run out of sight.”
“Too many boiled cabbages,” muttered Tarnton rudely.
Alliter’s junior and Enty entered the room together.
Enty spoke to Tarnton. “Leithan wants to thank you before you go.”
Tarnton attached a semi-stiff collar, in which he had placed his tie, on to his back collar-stud. “How is he?”
“Surprised.”
“Who isn’t?” He secured the front of the collar and tied his tie, then studied his reflection in the mirror. “Still, with a girl like that around one shouldn’t be surprised by anything. Ah, well, that’s the way the world works. Sometimes the women are for you and sometimes they’re against. I’m defending one next week who tried to separate her lover’s head from his neck with a blunt axe.”
“Too much red meat,” said Alliter, and none of his listeners was certain whether he was joking, or not.
*
“Well,” said Jaeger, “that was a ripe bastard, that was!”
“Outrageous,” snapped Murch. Somewhere deep inside him there was a rumble. “God, my guts!”
“Coming on bad, sir?”
Murch stood in the middle of the hall outside the courtroom. “Your case wasn’t properly prepared and the A.C.C. will go to town on it. The police have been made to look idiots.”
“Aren’t the courts often doing that to us, sir?”
“Only when the person in command of the case can’t bloody well be bothered to present his evidence properly.”
Jaeger looked at the clock on the far wall and realised that his wife would have cooked dinner for him since he had forgotten to ring through to say he would not be back. The dinner would now be a burnt offering.
“Goddamn it, they can’t honestly believe she saw the old cow,” exclaimed Murch.
“Looks like they did, sir.”
“Can’t we charge them?”
“With being stupid?”
“There’ll be a conference to-morrow at nine sharp. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll find out what went wrong and why.” Murch lit a cigarette. “She’s a bitch.”
“Yes, sir. But if I was Leithan, I’d be very proud of the fact.”
*
Enty had suggested that Leithan and Pamela leave by a side exit to escape both the newspaper men and the public. By accepting his advice and the services of a friendly usher as guide, they were able to step out on to an almost deserted pavement.
It was a typically raw January night. The sky was overcast and the air was coldly moist, promising more rain very soon. The roads were still wet and the traffic sprayed the pavements with filthy water.
Leithan, for the moment oblivious of the cold, stood in the centre of the pavement. He looked upwards, and in his mind the clouds were not there and he was staring at the stars. In the cell, he had wondered if he would ever see the stars again.
He tightened his hold on her hand. “I…” He looked down at her. “Let’s hurry and shake the dust of the town off our feet.”
They began to walk. He heard a small sound from her and in the light from a street lamp he saw that she was crying. He came to an abrupt halt.
She wiped her eyes with her free hand. “I’m being a stupid woman. But I feel as if for the past few weeks someone has been hitting me with a crow-bar and that they’ve only just stopped. The relief’s almost more than I can bear.”
“Are you asking for the man with the crow-bar to start up again?”
“Don’t be a fool. Kiss me, Charles, right here.”
“Pam…did you see her?”
“I saw her, Charles, I saw her. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, I saw her. Now shut up and kiss me.”
He kissed her.
They resumed walking and crossed the road to the car-park in which she had left the Rapier. She took the keys from her pocket. “Here you are, Charles.”
“Shall we go home?”
“Unless you want to ignore a meal fit for a king.”
“It sounds as if you didn’t doubt I’d be back?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
He unlocked the car door and climbed in, then opened the near-side door for her. They fixed their safety-belts.
Leithan started the engine. He wondered, in an absurd way, whether it was really he who was about to drive the car back to Lower Brakebourne Farm.
“Love me?” asked Pamela.
“All there is.” He went to lean across to kiss her and the safety-belt prevented his doing so.
“Let’s get back home, Charles. I’m so scared that if we don’t hurry I’ll begin to bawl like a baby and you’d get so terribly embarrassed.”
“D’you really think anything you did would embarrass me to-night?”
“Of course.” She smiled. “You’re such a prude.”
He could just make out the crinkly lines about her mouth and the shine of her eyes. He unlocked the handbrake, reversed, and drove out on to the road. “D’you know what all married servicemen are asked by their mates before they go on leave?”
“I’ll buy it.”
“What’s the second thing you’re going to do when you get home?”
“Charles, you’re almost being crude! Remind me to kiss you crudely the moment we arrive. If there’s anything that would do me good right now, it’s crudity.”
They reached the countryside and left behind them the ugly, sprawling, collection of houses and bungalows which mirrored a pattern that was cursing all England.
The headlights picked out hedges, gaunt and leafless trees, and bare fields. Even if they were on a main road, they were still surrounded by country.
He felt the slime of prison slough off him with every mile they travelled. Soon, it would be a memory that would have consciously to be recalled, but for the moment there was piquancy in the fact that he was still near enough to it to use it as a standard of comparison.
He took his left hand off the steering wheel and felt her knee. “You still haven’t asked me what I’m going to do second.”
She chuckled.
*
Pamela had chosen the meal as an act of faith.
The Malasol caviare had been sent down from Fortnum and Mason. Mrs. Andrews had seen the account and had looked at the caviare with shocked surprise. The Poulet à la Périgord that followed had taken many hours of patient preparation.
Leithan was pouring out the last of the Bienvenues Batard-Montrachet when Pamela said: “Mrs. Pauls was very solicitously asking me how you were.”
“Grubbing for scandal. I trust you gave the old bitch an earful.” They had finished a bottle of champagne as an apéritif and Leithan was finding that that, together with the wine they had had during the meal, was affecting him far more than it should have done.
“I told her you’d soon be around to answer for yourself.”
Leithan lifted his glass. “To you.”
They drank.
“When I see her, I’ll give her something more to chew on,” he said. “I’ll tell her that the date of our marriage will be as soon as possible, if not sooner.”
Pamela put down her glass.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Charles.”
“Yes, there is. I know that look from old. I learned about it the very first time I suggested we might have dinner together. What’s the matter?”
“Charles… Charles, we can’t marry.”
“Who’s going to stop us?”
She stared at him. “I saw her. She’s still alive.”
He gulped down the wine in his glass and did not consciously taste it. “What’s the matter, cold feet? You’ve always called a spade a spade before, so come out with it now and tell me I murdered her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You never really saw Evadne at the trial, did you? You only saved me out of a sense of duty which you imagined you owed me and very wisely you’re not going beyond that. Evadne was a bitch. I’ll call a spade a spade. The biggest bitch I’ve known. She made my life a hell. I was rich and could afford to do what I wanted, but her mockery turned life into hell. Hell’s always in the mind, you know. I was just as mentally miserable as some dirty starving beggar who loses his last sixpence. Maybe you’re like the rest of the world and reckon I ought to have grinned and borne it because it wasn’t really at all bad since I’d a lovely house and farm and enough money to travel or do whatever else I wanted — but those things only exist as a relief in the minds of the onlookers. I’ve never told you before, but she made me think of suicide. Did you know that if the barrel of a loaded shotgun is filled with water, it’ll atomise a man’s head. The column of water becomes like a column of steel. No time for pain, and what else prevents half the population killing itself off?”
“For God’s sake stop it, Charles.”
“If I had killed her, I was entitled to. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But our revered law daren’t think that straight and apparently neither do you. Are you afraid that what happened once can happen again?”
“Charles, it’s terrible to talk like this. You’ve had too much to drink.”
“In vino veritas. Listen to the truth gushing from my lips. I think you’re making the right and proper judgment. If you step out of my life now, you’re a heroine. But if you married me, you’d be marrying a murderer and that would surely make you a fool. Lightning strikes the same place many times when there’s a conductor to guide it. You couldn’t live with me, knowing what I’m supposed to have done. Think of all the questions in your mind! Was it with the gun, a blunt instrument, a rope noose? They’ve got to give me my gun back now. Funny, isn’t it?”
Pamela stood up. “I’m going, Charles.”
“Where?”
“Home?”
“Getting scared?”
“I just can’t stand this.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Not even you are going to stop me, Charles.”
He watched her leave the room. Let the women win the battles and the men were lost, sunk without trace. God! Could he really think in terms of winning and losing when on the table were the remains of a victory feast? A pyrrhic victory? Was that a fair description of a situation in which a man destroyed everything he wanted, everything he sought, everything he had dreamed about?
He heard the car come round from the garage and go down the drive. The sound slowly drifted into silence. He wanted to get drunk, violently, degradingly, drunk, because then he might find relief.
He went into the kitchen and down to the cellar and picked up the first bottle he could. Red, white, rose, still or sparkling — what did it matter?
Chapter XVII
Leithan woke up. He remembered the last time he had been drunk: twenty years previously, when he had been working for the Admiralty. They had refused to let him go to sea, saying he was far more valuable ashore as a man of letters. A man of letters! Twenty years could do a lot to a man’s reputation.
He listened to the world. A robin was calling, the dogs were yowling, and from somewhere far away came the faint boom of a diesel tractor. Overhead, he heard the sounds of pattering feet crossing the loft boards. Evadne had waged continuous war on the mice of the house, but although she had won battles she had never gained a victory.
A pyrrhic victory. He remembered what had happened the previous night and was shocked to discover he had behaved so stupidly.
He sat up and his head began to ache. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost nine o’clock. If the world outside had remained the world outside, Deakin would be mucking out the cows, Mrs. Andrews would have left Ashford, and Pamela… He stared at the second, and empty bed.
He washed and shaved, went downstairs and prepared breakfast. By the time he had finished his second cup of coffee, he felt reasonably clear-headed. He looked about him and saw an empty bottle of Chateau-Margaux. Perversely, that hurt as much as anything. That he could have used so great a wine solely in order to get drunk.
There was a knock on the front door. He looked through the kitchen window and saw a girl he did not recognise walking up to talk to Jaeger, who was waiting by the door.
What in the hell was Jaeger doing there? It was all over and done with, bottled up and thrown away.
He went along the passage, through the sitting-room, and into the hall. He opened the front door and before he could say anything, the girl called out: “Good morning, Mr. Leithan, I’m Molly Quayle. Mrs. Breslow took me on as kennel-maid. I do like the Cuencas, they’re such darlings.”
Leithan stared at her. Jolly hockey-sticks. “I’ll have a word with you later.” His anger increased when he realised she was regarding him with an obvious determination to record everything about him: writing home to jolly-d mother to say what a murderer looked and spoke like? “Come in,” he said to Jaeger.
Jaeger stepped into the hall and Leithan shut the door on the fascinated girl.
The detective walked across and stood in front of the collection of guns. “I was in London the other day and I saw a Cantriner En Wien repeating air-rifle going for two hundred pounds. I wouldn’t have called it as good an example as yours.”
Leithan looked up at the short barrelled, leather covered, butted rifle, which was inlaid with a profusion of gold and silver.
“There was an early flintlock pistol in the same shop,” continued Jaeger. “It was badly damaged — the top half of the flintlock was missing and the trigger was broken. I thought I might buy it for something under a couple of quid. The polished and perfumed assistant very loftily told me that it cost thirty guineas.”
“Have you come here to talk antique guns?”
“I’ll admit I’d like to, sir, but I don’t suppose you’d want to waste your time that way.”
“You’re supposing right.”
“No hard feelings, I hope?”
“How should I know what you’d call them? After all, you did your damnedest to have me convicted of murder.”
“No, sir, not like that. I’ve a job to do and I like to do everything as well as possible. There’s nothing personal in it.”
“Nothing personal when you spent night after night out in my fields searching for her body and making certain you woke me up so that I knew all about it?”
“Call it a strong sense of duty, sir.”
“I’d call it lots of things.”
“I bet.” The good humour of the D.I. became even more apparent.
Against his will, Leithan found his anger disappearing. He had never welcomed the n
eed to be rude and when faced with good humour he could only respond to it. “Let’s go in there,” he said finally. He pointed to the sitting-room.
Mrs. Andrews entered the house through the front doorway. She smiled delightedly. “Good morning, Mr. Leithan, sorry to use this door, but the other’s still locked. Cold wind, isn’t it? As I said to Norah — she’s the one whose young brother ran off with Betty and he refused to marry her even though a kid’s coming despite her mother saying it isn’t — much more of this cold and we’ll all have to buy more of that slate what the Coal Board sells as coal. How about some coffee?”
“Thanks.”
Leithan closed the door of the sitting-room behind himself. “That’s the first time she’s seen me since I went to prison. I’ve been tried for the murder of my wife and found not guilty. Yet all she’s interested in are the scandalous doings of the neighbours.”
“Far more important to her. In any case, I’ll guarantee she was certain you couldn’t possibly be guilty.”
Leithan picked up the silver cigarette-box and offered it to the other. “Do you? I forget.”
“I usually only handle a pipe, sir.”
“Of course. Light up if you want to.”
Jaeger took his pipe from his pocket and filled the bowl. As he finished tamping down the tobacco, he looked up. “There’s nothing official about my visit. It’s completely off my own bat.”
Leithan hoped the coffee would not be long. His headache had returned with added intensity.
“I’ve been wondering, sir, if you’d set a tidy mind to peace?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You must know that if you tell me the full story now it couldn’t harm you at all?”
“Are you still accusing me of murdering her?”
“I’m just wondering about the facts, sir. Like I said, I’ve a tidy mind.”
“Take it with you out of this house. What are you after? Trying to get your own back any way you can? If I did kill my wife, it’s pretty obvious Mrs. Breslow was lying. I suppose you’d give anything to land her for perjury and send her to jail?”
Jaeger lit his pipe. He stared with appreciation at the ingle-nook fireplace which had on the right-hand side the original bread oven. “I’ve one feeling for Mrs. Breslow, sir. Respectful, but very strong, admiration.”
The Benefits of Death Page 15
