CHAPTER 14
Elizabeth Moore sat with a book on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She had turned off the wireless after listening to the headlines of the nine o’clock news. Her mind refused to leap the Atlantic, the Channel, traverse the wastes of Europe and Asia, and concern itself with the follies which men were perpetrating hundreds of thousands of miles away. There are moments when the world contracts to what is happening to one person. Elizabeth ’s world had so contracted. There was only one person it it-Carr. She herself was present only as a striving against pain. Fancy hovered vaguely as a threat. But Carr wandered alone in that small, empty world. He was in torment, and she couldn’t go to him, or touch him, or help him. A line came to her from her schooldays:
“Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d…
We mortal millions live alone.”
And it was true-when it came down to brass tacks you had to work things out for yourself. Another line came to her, from the Bible this time, full of haunting melancholy beauty: “No man can save his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him, for it cost more than that to redeem their souls, so that he must let it alone for ever.”
It was on this that she stretched out her hand to the bookcase without even looking to see what book it was that she had taken. It lay open upon her lap, and it was just white paper and black print, as dead to her as if the script had been Phoenician.
She did not know whether the time was long or short before she heard the tapping on the window. The room was at the back of the house. She lifted the curtain and saw only the black night pressing up against the glass like another curtain. Then in the dark something moved. A hand came up to knock again. Carr said her name.
It was a casement window with a low sill. She threw it wide, and he came in and pulled it to behind him. She let the curtain fall into its place, and saw his ghastly look, his shaking hands. They caught at her and held her, weighing her down until she came to a chair and dropped upon it. Then he was on his knees, his head against her, his whole body shaken. It was as if they had stumbled through the everyday crust into a dream where the most fantastic things are as natural as the drawing of one’s breath. She put her arms round him and held him until the shuddering died down and he was still, his head against her breast, her arms holding him. She knew that she had said his name, and that he had repeated hers over and over like a cry for help. If there had been other words, she did not know. They were in her thought, they beat with her blood, but she did not know if they passed her lips, or whether they reached him without sound on a pure tide of comforting love.
“What is it, my darling?”
She heard herself say that, and felt him shudder.
“Don’t let me go!”
“Carr-what is it?”
He told her then, lifting his head and speaking just above a whisper, as if the breath had gone out of him and he had to struggle for it.
“That man-I told you about-the one who took Marjory away-and left her-I saw his photograph-in a paper. It’s James Lessiter-”
She said with a gasp, “Carr, what have you done?”
“I haven’t-I thought I should if I stayed.”
The fear which had touched her was still cold at her heart.
“What happened?”
“Henry Ainger came in-he brought some papers for Rietta. Afterwards Fancy and I were looking at them-Rietta had gone to the telephone. I saw that man’s picture with his name under it-James Lessiter. I told you Marjory had kept his photograph-it was the same one. Rietta came in-I asked her, ‘Is this James Lessiter?’ After that I don’t quite know what happened. She said, ‘Yes,’ and I went out of the house- I wanted to get my hands on him-I knew I’d kill him if I did. I’ve been walking-I don’t know how long-”
She looked across his shoulder to the grandfather clock with its slow, solemn tick.
“It’s getting on for half past nine.”
“I can’t have taken an hour to get here-I suppose I did- I think I started out the other way-then I thought about you. It’s all I did think about after that-to get to you. I’ve made a damned fool of myself-”
“It doesn’t matter.”
It came to him that what she had just said was the underlying fact in their relationship. It didn’t matter what he did or said, or what anyone else did or said, whether he went away and forgot or came back and remembered, wet or shine, day or night, year in year out, the bond between them held. He couldn’t put it into words. He could only say, “No, it doesn’t matter,” and lay his head against her shoulder again.
The passion of the last hour had gone out of him, it already seemed remote and far away. There was a renewing. They stayed like that without any sense of time.
At last she said, “They won’t know where you are-they’ll be worried about you.”
Elizabeth ’s world had come back to the normal again. It held other people-Rietta Cray, who must be terribly worried, and Jonathan Moore, who would be coming home after an evening’s chess with Dr. Craddock. She got up and began to make tea, fetching the kettle from the kitchen, moving about the small domestic tasks as if they were the whole of love and service. It was perhaps the happiest hour that she had ever known. To receive back all that you have lost, all that you have not even hoped for, to be allowed to give again what you have kept unspent, is joy beyond words. She had not many words.
Carr was silent too. He had travelled a long way-not the two and a half miles from Melling, but the five years through which he had come to reach this place again. When she said, “You must go,” he put his arms round her and said her name.
“ Elizabeth -”
“Carr-”
“ Elizabeth -are you going to take me back?”
“Do you want me to?”
“You know.”
There was a little pause before she said,
“Can you-come back?”
“Do you mean-about Fancy?”
“You said you didn’t know whether you were engaged to her.”
He gave a shaky laugh.
“That was just talking. We had it out on the way home. She’s a nice kid really-quite sensible and matter-of-fact. ‘No offence meant, and none taken,’ as her estimable Mum would say, so that’s all right. I’ve come back like a bad shilling. Are you going to have me?”
Elizabeth said, “I can’t help it.”
CHAPTER 15
He took a sober pace back to Melling. The feeling of fighting time and space was gone. His mind was anchored and safe. Everything on the far side of the storm that had swept him seemed a little unreal, like a dream when you have waked up with the daylight round you. It might have happened a long time ago to someone else. He had Elizabeth again. It seemed the most amazing thing that he could have let her go. He began to plan their life together as he walked.
He came out on to the edge of the Green and saw it like a soft dark smudge under the night sky. There was neither moon nor star, but after the lane with its high banks and tangled hedgerows it seemed by comparison light. He could see the row of cottages away on the far side, and the black, crouched outline of the church. He kept the left-hand path and came up with the Gate House. Light showed through the curtains. Catherine was still up.
Such a little thing can decide so much. If Catherine Welby had gone to bed a little earlier, a lot of things would have been different. The light shining through her pale brocade curtains broke Carr’s train of thought and started another. If Catherine was up, other people would be up. In a flash “other people” became James Lessiter. He could hear Rietta saying, “Mrs. Lessiter never destroyed anything. He’ll have a mass of papers to go through.”
James Lessiter would be up. He could get the whole sordid business between them finished and start fresh. He wasn’t afraid of himself any longer. He could walk in, tell the swine what he thought of him, and walk out again. It was fixed in his mind that he must do that before the whole unhappy business of his marriage could be put away. It had robbed him of every illusion,
every happiness. But Marjory was dead. He had to close her account with James Lessiter. As to touching him, he would as soon touch carrion. He turned in between the tall pillars and went up the drive.
The wall-clock at the White Cottage struck its three soft notes. Rietta Cray looked up incredulously. That it should be no more than a quarter to eleven seemed to give the whole lie to time. It was an hour since Fancy had gone up to bed, a quarter over two since Carr had flung out of the house. On any ordinary evening the time would have gone too fast. She worked hard all day, but once the supper things were washed up she could step aside out of this hard post-war world and become a leisured woman, with a concert, a play, waiting for her at the turn of a switch, or a book to take her here and there in time, or anywhere in space. But this evening there were none of these things. No enchantment has power on the racked mind. She did not know when so heavy a fear had weighed her down. It was past all reason, but she could do nothing to lift it. She told herself that she would laugh at it tomorrow, and tomorrow seemed very far away.
The house was dreadfully still. She missed the old dog who had died a month before, friend and companion of fifteen years. She would have to get a puppy, but she had put off for the old dog’s sake. It was too quiet here alone at night.
Then, into the quiet, there came footsteps-not in front from the path skirting the Green, but from the back, coming up the garden. Like Catherine’s the room ran through the house, windows at either end. She heard the click of the garden gate, she heard the steps come right up to the back door and come in. She would have locked the door before she went to bed, but she hadn’t locked it yet. While she was up and about it would never have occurred to her to lock her door.
But the footsteps frightened her now. They had come down through the wood, as she herself had come an hour and a half ago. They had come down from Melling House. They were in the passage now, and the door opened. Carr came in and shut it behind him. He leaned against it and said,
“He’s dead.”
Rietta stood looking at him. His face was pale and stern- dreadfully pale, dreadfully stern. There was no wildness in his eyes. They looked at her, and she looked back, whilst everything in her froze. When she said nothing, Carr raised his voice to her as if she were deaf. He said,
“Do you hear?-James Lessiter is dead.”
She said, “No!”-not because she didn’t believe him, but because she did. It was the last hopeless protest against something too dreadful to be accepted.
His next words cut across the numb surface of her mind like a knife.
“Why did you do it?”
“Carr!”
He left the door and came forward. She saw then that he had the raincoat bundled up on his arm. It was the first moment that she had thought about it since she had dropped it across a chair in the study at Melling House. She thought of it now, and remembered that she had left it there.
Carr thrust it at her.
“What sort of a fool do you think you are to leave it there with his blood on it?”
Rietta lifted her head. It was like a nightmare-nothing made sense. But the numbness was going.
“It’s my own blood. I scratched my wrist going up through the wood.” She turned it for him to see-a scarlet line like a hair, already healing.
Carr gave an angry laugh.
“Don’t be a fool, Rietta-not with me! We’ve got to think.”
“I scratched myself-”
He shook out the coat, held up the right sleeve, and heard her gasp. The cuff was drenched and soaked. The red, wet stain ran up almost to the elbow, the breadth below it was splashed and streaked.
“You scratched your wrist-Oh, my God, talk sense!”
There was a moment when the room shook under her feet and the red stains spread in a milky mist. Then she had hold of herself again and her sight cleared.
“Carr, look at me!”
He was looking.
“And listen! I don’t know anything about this. After you went out I was afraid of what you might do. You’d had a shock. I-well, I was afraid. I took the first coat I touched and ran up the back way to Melling House. When I got there the room was hot-I dropped the coat on a chair and never thought of it again. I talked to James-in the end we quarrelled. No, it wasn’t exactly a quarrel. He said something I resented very much, and I walked out. I never thought about the coat.”
He was holding up the sleeve.
“That’s his blood.”
She said, “I did scratch my wrist-it bled. He lent me his handkerchief-I must have dropped that too.”
“What’s the good of telling me all this came from a scratch on your wrist?”
“I don’t tell you that-it didn’t. But I did catch my wrist on something in the wood. It bled quite a lot for such a little scratch.” A shudder went over her. “Not like that!” She paused for a moment, drawing hard upon her self-control. Then she came up to him. “Carr, put that dreadful thing down and tell me what’s happened. We’re talking in the dark. And for God’s sake tell me the truth, because nothing else is going to be the slightest bit of use.”
He let the coat fall down in a heap on the floor. It lay there with a broken look. But Rietta had no eyes for it. They were fixed on Carr’s hard, dark face. He said,
“Very well, I’ll tell you. When I went out of here I didn’t know what I was doing. I walked myself pretty well off my legs, because if I hadn’t I was going to go up to Melling House and smash James Lessiter. I must have walked for an hour, and I fetched up at Jonathan Moore’s. Elizabeth was there by herself. I stayed there until I’d got hold of myself. We-” his face changed-“she’s taken me back. When I came away I didn’t want to kill him any more-I just wanted to be quit of the whole thing. That’s the truth, Rietta. When I got to the Gate House Catherine’s light was on. I thought, then it wasn’t so late-Lessiter would be up-I could get quit of it all and start fresh. I wasn’t going to touch him. I was going to let him know that I knew, and I was going to tell him what I thought of him. Stupid of me, I expect, but that’s how I saw it. I went up to the house, and the front was all dark. I thought if he was up he’d be in the study, so I went round to the glass door, and found it ajar.”
Rietta took her breath quickly.
“I can’t remember-I can’t remember whether I shut it. I don’t suppose I did-I was too angry-”
He gave a sort of half laugh.
“Angry! I shouldn’t say too much about that!”
“It was about Catherine-it doesn’t matter. Carr, go on.”
“I opened the door and went in. The curtains were drawn behind it. The overhead light was on. He was lying slumped forward over the table with his head smashed in.”
“Carr!”
He nodded.
“It wasn’t pretty. It looked as if he had been sitting in his chair and had been hit from behind. The poker was lying on the hearthrug. There wasn’t any doubt about what he’d been hit with.”
She said, “Horrible!”
“Not nice to look at. Probably instantaneous. You’re not expecting me to be sorry for him, are you? If we’re not careful we may have to be uncommon sorry for ourselves.”
“Go on.”
“I had that cheering thought in the first five seconds. When I saw the raincoat it got a lot stronger. It was turned over, so a bit of the lining showed, and I thought I’d seen the stripe before. I went and had a look and found my initials on the neckband. After that I wiped the handle of the poker with a bloodstained handkerchief which seemed to have dropped on the hearth.”
She shuddered.
“He lent it to me for my wrist. You shouldn’t have wiped the handle.”
He stared at her accusingly.
“Why shouldn’t I have wiped it? If my raincoat was there, someone brought it, didn’t they? It wasn’t I. And that left you.”
“Carr!”
“It’s no use saying ‘Carr!’ If you’d had a row and hit him, it would be a hundred to one you’d rush off and nev
er think about fingerprints. But if it was someone else, and someone clever enough to make use of my raincoat, then it was a hundred to one he’d have dealt with the handle of the poker already-anyhow that’s what I thought at the time. I wiped the handle, and I put the handkerchief on the fire, which was practically choked with ash. I don’t know if it’ll burn or not-it doesn’t really matter. Then I wiped the edge of the door with my own handkerchief, got the raincoat, and came away.”
She took another of those quick breaths.
“You ought to have rung up the police.”
He said, “I may be a fool, but I’m not a damned fool.” Then he picked up the raincoat. “We’ve got to get the blood off this. What’s the best way?”
“Cold water… Carr, I don’t like it. We ought to send for the police-we haven’t done anything wrong.”
He touched her for the first time, taking her shoulder in a bruising grip.
“You’ve got a good headpiece-use it! On the evidence, do you think you could find a dozen people who would believe I didn’t do it?”
“You?”
“Or you.”
A dazed feeling came over her. She put up her hand to her head.
“A dozen people-”
He turned at the door.
“There are twelve people on a jury, Rietta.”
CHAPTER 16
Mr. Stokes started his milk round at seven in the morning. He reached Melling House at twenty past, and found what he afterwards described as a very horrid state of things. The back door stood open. Nothing unusual about that. All in the day’s work that he should take the milk through to the kitchen and say “I don’t mind if I do” when Mrs. Mayhew offered him a cup of tea. But this morning there wasn’t any tea-only Mrs. Mayhew sitting up straight in a kitchen chair with her hands gripping the seat on either side. Looked as if she was afraid she’d fall off if she was to let go. She sat up straight, and looked at Mr. Stokes, but he wouldn’t like to say she saw him-face all white like wet curds, and her eyes set in her head. Mr. Stokes didn’t know when he’d had such a turn.
Miss Silver Comes To Stay Page 8
