The Unburied

by Charles Palliser

  ‘I was suggesting’, I said, ‘that Mr Stonex had killed his brother before Fickling and I arrived. His body was lying in the study.’

  ‘Dr Carpenter has already testified to the impossibility of that,’ the Coroner said. ‘The corpse is certainly that of Mr Stonex the banker and not some hypothetical brother of his.’

  I opened my mouth to say that the doctor had obviously been bribed, but thought better of it.

  ‘And so’, the Coroner went on, ‘I’m going to advise the jury to dismiss this red herring from their consideration. Thank you, anyway, Dr Courtine.’

  I sat down and as I did so I glanced towards where Fickling and Slattery were sitting. The latter was smiling at his friend who was still shaken and wan but was nodding. It was clear to me that, far from alarming them, what I had just said had reassured them. I must have approached very near to the truth but without quite attaining it. I had another surprise, for at that moment Dr Locard turned and smiled encouragingly at me.

  The Coroner announced that there were no further witnesses and that he would proceed instantly to his address to the jury.

  ‘Some of the witnesses you have heard’, he began, ‘have tried to complicate a very straightforward matter. But from my long experience on the Coroner’s bench I know that there are in every case issues which are never fully understood. That is particularly inevitable here for we are dealing with the perverse mind of a human being capable of cold-blooded murder, and therefore it is wrong to seek the enlightened rationality which guides the more elevated representatives of our race. I advise you, therefore, to see the case in all its evident – though brutal – simplicity. You should treat with considerable scepticism the evidence of Dr Carpenter relating to the time of death. You should also set aside the ingenious theory of Dr Courtine, which is a plot for a sensational novel rather than evidence for a court of law. Every fact upon which reliance can be placed points towards Perkins as the murderer: the testimony that Mr Stonex admitted him to the house at half-past five, the bloodstained banknotes hidden in his house, and the fact that he kept changing his account of events as each new piece of evidence against him emerged. Foreman of the jury, will you now decide among yourselves whether you are able to reach a determination here and now, or whether you need to adjourn to the room that is available for you?’

  The jurors conferred briefly and then the foreman, a burly, red-faced man who looked like a prosperous grocer, said: ‘We don’t need to withdraw, your honour. We’ve decided already.’

  ‘Very well. What is your finding?’

  ‘We have determined that the deceased was unlawfully killed and slain by the prisoner, Edward Perkins.’

  There was an anguished cry as if someone had been dealt a physical blow. We all looked at the prisoner whose face was twisted in horror and fear. The Coroner gave instructions that he be held in custody until his trial and we watched silently as he rose to depart and the prisoner was led away.

  I got up and went to the end of the row of seats but found I could not move because the ample figure of the Major was obstructing the aisle, and so I turned back to go the other way but found Dr Locard talking to the lawyer. Beyond them I noticed Sergeant Adams looking at me as if he wished to speak, but, like myself, he was trapped where he was. As I stood there, unnoticed and feeling rather uncomfortable, I heard the Major’s voice booming behind me, in answer to a question which I had not heard: ‘A formality, I promise you. On that evidence, no jury could acquit. He will hang before Easter.’

  I advanced towards Dr Locard and heard him arranging to come to Mr Thorrold’s office later that afternoon and saw the lawyer hurry away. I was relieved to see out of the corner of my eye that Fickling was also leaving – accompanied by Slattery.

  To my surprise Dr Locard turned towards me and smiled and said: ‘Dr Courtine, my wife and I find that we are unexpectedly free this evening. You would be doing us a great honour if you would dine with us. There are several matters I wish to discuss with you.’

  I could not think quickly enough of a convincing reason not to do so and therefore I accepted and we agreed the hour.

  We shook hands and he walked over to talk to the Major and Mr Wattam. Before I could get away, Adams was beside me blocking my escape: ‘I found what you said very interesting, Dr Courtine. Very interesting indeed. Although I have to confess that I don’t believe your idea about Mr Stonex murdering a brother is correct, I think you might have hit upon something not that far removed from the truth.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sergeant Adams,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Lowering his voice and glancing round he said: ‘Did you notice something Mr Fickling said just at the end?’

  ‘Forgive me. I don’t have time to discuss it now.’

  ‘You could find that house in Orchard Street again, couldn’t you, sir?’

  ‘I must ask you to let me pass, Sergeant.’

  ‘Will you come to the station-house tomorrow? Any time at all. I’ll be there all day.’

  ‘I doubt if I’ll have a moment before I leave.’

  ‘I have your address in Cambridge, Dr Courtine. I could visit you at your convenience.’

  ‘If you’ll forgive me,’ I said, pushing past him. I left the building and walked quickly towards the Close.

  I had not a minute to spare. The Sergeant was right: I had come near the truth. Yet I had still failed to perceive it. Why had Fickling been so ready to defend himself with an alibi when I had not accused him of anything? What was it that he was afraid I was going to say? Above all, as I walked I could not get out of my mind those extraordinary words which had also intrigued the Sergeant: In that case, who was it who gave us tea?

  I was anxious to get back to Fickling’s house, pack up my things, and escape before he returned. As I hurried through the silent streets, I hoped that he and Slattery had not gone back there. It was already getting dark and the gas-lights were being lit, although the Close, which I turned into through the North Gate, was still unilluminated. Why was Dr Locard suddenly so friendly? Why was he not disgusted by my public confrontation with Fickling? Surely what he feared above everything else was scandal.

  When I entered the house there seemed to be nobody there. I did not want to draw attention to my presence and so, instead of turning up the gas in the hall, I merely lit a candle from the pilot-light. I went straight up to my room and quickly packed my bag.

  Fickling had been involved in the murder. I was sure of it. And an idea about what had really happened was forming in my mind. My theory about the brother was wrong, though it had been close enough to the truth to have frightened him. I was sure that Perkins was innocent and in that case, I must try to find evidence to support my new hypothesis. The keys from the victim’s house would be the best proof for they could not be destroyed and must have been abandoned or hidden somewhere.

  As I came down the stairs my eye fell on the grandfather clock which was shamelessly wrong about the hour. I remembered that it kept time badly. Just like old Mr Stonex’s! I put down the bag and the candlestick, opened the clockcase and reached down to the weights. There was something attached to one of them. I lifted it and found it was a set of keys. At that moment I believed I had solved the murder. Here were the keys by means of which the killer had left the house of the victim and locked it behind him yesterday afternoon. I was also frightened and horrified at the thought of what I might be about to unleash. This would destroy Fickling and several other people, but it would save an innocent man from the gallows. I found that I could face the prospect of Fickling’s disgrace and punishment with equanimity. He had betrayed and made use of me, exploiting our former friendship – our boyish love – without shame. He had treated me like a fool. I doubted if he would hang for what he had done and I did not go so far as to hope that he would. But he had committed – or at least aided in the committing of – a terrible act, and justice must take its course. I removed the keys and looked at them in the dim light of the candle. There were t
wo keys on a single ring, the larger of which was evidently a house-key. Picking up the candlestick I hurried down the stairs and tried the key in the lock of the door. It turned. So it was not the key to the New Deanery. I felt a surge of disappointment. Of course, it made no sense that the murderer should retain the keys. He would have discarded them as soon after leaving the New Deanery as possible.

  The other key was too small to fit a door and was probably for a cupboard. A cupboard! I had a sudden vision of the moment on Tuesday night when I had seen Fickling ascending the stairs as I was coming down from my room. Could he have been putting the key back in its hiding-place after concealing that mysterious package? I hurried up to the sitting-room with the candlestick to light my way. The key fitted the armoire and the door swung open to my touch immediately. There were several objects inside, one of which looked like the package. I opened it and removed several layers of wrapping paper until I was able to examine the contents by the light of my candle. Their nature first surprised and then appalled me. What I saw was from a certain point of view charming and could be entirely innocent, and yet I knew from hints and overheard fragments of conversation that they were far from it. What they were I do not propose to reveal beyond saying that they were photographic plates. Many things that I had heard, overheard, witnessed and even guessed, were now explained and confirmed. I had very little time to decide what to do with them. In one sense I had no right to take them but at the same time, they were quite improperly in Fickling’s possession. Neither did their owner have the right to have them back since such photographs should not have been taken. If Fickling found them gone he would know that I had removed them, but that was not a consideration that detained me. But what in heaven’s name should I do with them?

  I sealed the package up again, took a pencil from the table nearby and wrote on the outside ‘For the personal attention of the Dean’. Although I had only a vague understanding of the complications involved, I assumed that possession of them would untie the Dean’s hands and make it easier for him to see that justice was done. Then I locked the armoire and went back down to the half-landing. I had just replaced the keys inside the clock when I heard the street-door open and the sound of voices.

  Because I had not turned up the gas, they did not realize I was in the house! Without thinking, I blew out the candle. To my relief I heard them go into the front-parlour. I placed the package in my bag, picked it up and crept down the stairs in the darkness.

  As I passed the door I looked into the room and saw them. They did not see me because they were otherwise occupied. I was so stunned by what I saw that I could not move. Of course, as a man of the world and one who has spent his entire adult life in the University, I have heard of such things. But to be presented with the reality of it so suddenly was disconcerting, to say the least. And yet, what after all was love? If it was a good in itself, did it matter what form it took? Could it ever be called perverse and unnatural? The ancients had accepted many forms of love and it was only the narrow, bigoted, mean-minded spirit of Judaeo-Christianity which was so censorious about it.

  So much was now clear to me. There was no unknown mistress to whom Fickling had gone late on Wednesday night and it was Slattery’s hands that I had seen through the window. But in that case, who was the woman whose voice I had heard?

  I must have stood transfixed for ten seconds, and then Slattery, who was facing the door, looked over Fickling’s shoulder and saw me.

  Slattery smiled and said: ‘I suppose you’re profoundly shocked, Dr Courtine.’

  Fickling whirled round to face me and I saw naked hatred and fear on his countenance. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  I glanced down at my bag. ‘I had hoped we might avoid meeting again.’

  ‘I can’t feel that more than you do.’

  ‘You say I’m shocked,’ I said to Slattery. ‘What I’m shocked by is what you two have collaborated in during the last few days. I now know why you lied about meeting poor old Mr Stonex on Wednesday night,’ I said to Fickling. ‘I understand everything now.’

  ‘In that case ...’ Fickling began, but Slattery held his arm in a disturbingly intimate manner and said softly: ‘What do you understand, Dr Courtine?’

  ‘You’re going to watch an innocent young man hang for a murder you helped to bring about. Both of you.’

  Fickling looked down at the floor but an expression of entirely meretricious amazement appeared on Slattery’s face: ‘I was at choir-practice and playing the organ all afternoon and Fickling was with you. How on earth can either of us have been involved?’

  ‘I’ve told you, Mr Slattery,’ I said flatly, ‘I understand how the trick was worked. It wasn’t the victim who gave us tea.’

  ‘Are you going to try to persuade the authorities of yet another remarkable theory?’ he said, still smiling.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Is this your revenge?’ Fickling said.

  ‘What should I avenge?’ I asked. He said nothing. ‘What did you do to me that I should want to avenge?’

  He smiled spitefully. ‘You said you’d forgiven me.’

  As he said those words I felt such a violent desire to seize him and bang his head back against the wall and throttle him that I staggered slightly and had to put my hand on the back of a chair.

  When I could trust myself to speak I said, as calmly as I was able: ‘You helped him to win her from me, didn’t you?’

  ‘Win her from you!’ he repeated mockingly. ‘He didn’t win her. What an absurd idea. She won him. But it’s true that I introduced him to her because I believed he might be the person to rescue her.’

  ‘Rescue her?’

  ‘She told me she only married you to get away from her mother. She found you unendurably dull. And physically repulsive.’

  ‘You’re lying. She loved me. When we married we were both in love.’

  ‘You really don’t understand, do you? You’re the worst kind of fraud – the kind who deceives himself. You’re a sentimentalist. You tell yourself comforting lies.’

  ‘You’re the liar. A liar and a traitor. You conspired to betray your closest friend, to destroy his happiness. And now you boast of it.’

  ‘Betray,’ he sneered. ‘You want people to betray you because it confirms your sense of moral superiority.’

  ‘Then I should be happy now because that’s why you invited me, isn’t it? To betray me again. You wanted to make use of me. To use my good name to provide you and your accomplices with an alibi. You only told me about Burgoyne so that I would go and read the inscription – which has nothing to do with him! – and meet that man at the back of the New Deanery.’

  ‘You mean Mr Stonex?’ Slattery said, looking puzzled.

  ‘I’m not a complete fool, Mr Slattery,’ I said. ‘I admit that I’ve been obtuse much of the time, but I’ve also been fairly acute.’

  ‘Well, I half agree with you about that,’ he said, with an odious smile.

  His words stung me into saying: ‘The individual whom I met on Wednesday afternoon was not Mr Stonex who at that moment was eating his dinner a few yards away.’

  Slattery struck his forehead. ‘Of course! It was his brother.’

  I turned from him with contempt. I had built a mistaken hypothesis on that slip of the tongue and I was embarrassed to think of it now. Yet I had at least noticed anomalies that others had overlooked even if my attempt to fit them together had been misguided.

  Fickling drew his lips into a weak, venomous, drunken smile and said: ‘His twin brother. Don’t forget that, Martin.’

  ‘Not his brother. I was wrong about that. His brother-in-law. That was the slip of the tongue that I spotted, even though I misunderstood it.’

  I had thought my revealing this would stun them, but although they glanced at each other nervously they were not devastated by my remark. Did that mean I had still not hit upon the entire truth?

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Slattery asked with no more than mild
curiosity.

  ‘I don’t know. You seem to have taken everyone in. Though I believe the Sergeant has perceived most of the truth. I suspect that some of the others have, too, but they have reasons for not wanting your role to be exposed. You see, I understand now how and why you have been protected by the canons. I warn you, however, that you may not be safe any longer.’

  To my delight I saw that at last I had upset them. Fickling started and even Slattery was clearly shaken by what I had said. Having done what I wanted, I quickly opened the door and left the house. They deserved it. I had no compunction about what I was about to do. Fickling’s words had struck home. In that moment I believed that what he had said was true. She had not loved me. She had found me unlovable.

  I made my way across the silent and deserted Close to the Deanery where I carefully pushed the package through the letter-box. Then I passed into the High Street and engaged a room at the Dolphin. I was so upset and depressed that I almost decided to send my apologies to Dr Locard and excuse myself from the invitation to dinner. I couldn’t face any more questioning about the Stonex murder or any more politicking over the fate of the manuscript. But then I thought how much I would regret losing another opportunity to talk to Mrs Locard and I made up my mind to go.

  Friday Evening

  Dr Locard’s dwelling – the Librarian’s House – was a large, comfortable old place in the Lower Close. The maidservant who answered the door took my hat and coat and told me she had been instructed to show me into her master’s study and so it was there, a moment later, that I found my host seated at a desk in the window with a blazing fire in the grate. He rose and greeted me warmly.

  ‘I was looking again at the manuscript,’ he said, indicating the desk.

  ‘You have it there?’

  ‘One of the few privileges of my post’, he said with a smile, ‘is that I may remove items for private study. But would you care to seat yourself and we’ll look at it again together?’