by Ellis Peters
In the corridor Johnny halted abruptly.
‘Wait a minute!’ he said, labouring with a new thought. ‘New blue plastic knitting-needles! He had those the night before the murder, I remember seeing them when he showed me the sweater he was knitting for Hans. Who gave him those? Codger couldn’t shop for the simplest thing, that was one thing Dolly never left to him. Someone provided him with those needles – before he killed Chatrier.’
‘Johnny, let it rest.’
‘I can’t. Somebody planned it, somebody made use of him. It wasn’t just that I said something that set him off – because somebody acted, somebody gave him the new needles and took the old ones …’
Sam had heard their voices, low as they were, and emerged from his box, the dog at his heels. He seemed to have shrunk since he had lost Codger, the big frame hung lank inside his clothes, the lines of his face were fallen into a mournful mask.
‘I thought you’d decided to stay the night,’ he said. ‘Tom’s been kicking his heels outside twenty minutes, waiting for you.’
Johnny seemed not to have heard a word of this. He stood staring at the old man with the flare of a wild suspicion in his eyes, and fought to bring the point-blank question out of his throat, where it was stuck fast and choking him.
‘Sam, tell me something. And tell me the truth. Did you put Codger up to killing Chatrier?’
They looked at each other for a moment in silence, the shock almost palpable on the air between them. Sam’s ancient eyes, that had seen Johnny grow from an insubordinate cadet to the man he was now, and never underestimated him and never gone in awe of him, fixed him with a steely gleam of indignation that could not quite burn into anger.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I did not. What do you think I am? Me, that’s looked after the poor beggar like a nursemaid all these years? No, I didn’t. And if you ever ask me a thing like that again, so help me, Johnny Truscott, I’ll clout you.’
Johnny knew the truth when he heard and saw it, at least in Sam. He heaved the horrible doubt off his chest in a gasping sigh of relief.
‘So help me, you should have done it this time,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon, Sam. I ought to have known better.’
And indeed he ought. Who had been more constant in his care for the poor wreck the sea had left of Codger? The night he’d mislaid his charge he’d had Martin out helping him to scour the neighbourhood, frantic with anxiety, until Johnny had telephoned from the police station to break the news to him. Without his burden he’d lost the obstinate energy that had been the mainspring of his life. Johnny saw suddenly and piteously how old he was, how the hard flesh had begun to dry up on his bones. What sort of friend was it who couldn’t do him the bare justice he himself had received from Musgrave?
‘That’s all right, lad. We’re all a bit out of ourselves. Get on home to bed, and forget it.’
He saw them out to the top of the steps, and the car was waiting below in a dim, desultory haze of rain. The long-legged dog pressed close at Sam’s heels, leaning against his twisted knee; it had chosen its place, and did not intend to be dislodged.
‘Don’t come down, Sam,’ said Gisela. ‘You go back inside, out of the rain.’
‘All right, if you say so. Good night, miss!’ He dug a hard fist into Johnny’s ribs, administering painful comfort. “Night, Johnny!’
‘Good night, Sam,’ said Johnny, shivering with unreasonable shame, and went down the steps to the car confused and sad and resigned and hopeful all at once, with Gisela in his arm.
‘All the same, someone—’ he said.
‘No, not necessarily. What do we know about the country of his mind, Johnny? We’re all without maps, there. Maybe he understood more than we knew, maybe he could do much more than we thought – when it was for you. Let him rest, Johnny,’ she said in his ear. ‘Stop now. There’s a time to stop, for everybody’s sake.’ Her cheek stooped briefly to his shoulder in a muted caress that made his heart lurch in him. ‘Stop before you break things,’ she said.
She felt then that his will to resist her was being lulled to sleep, that she was the certainty and the comfort in the chaos of his mind, and that she had only to remain close beside him and his hopeless inward inquiries would cease. Already the urgency was ebbing out of him, the tension slackening out of his tired body and troubled spirit. Let it alone now. Let him rest.
They had reached the bottom of the steps when she said suddenly: ‘Oh, wait a moment for me, please, I shall have to go back. I left a letter behind.… Sam told me there was one by the late delivery, and I never collected it. He must have forgotten it, too. I won’t be a moment.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Johnny.
‘No, you wait for me. I’ll only be a moment.’ And she ran back up the steps before he could insist, and vanished through the swinging door.
Sam had been scraping out the bowl of his foul old pipe with a penknife worn down to a sliver of steel, and was testing the result without much optimism. He blew, and the stem bubbled like a boiling kettle; he sucked, and drew distressing noises from it, like a cow proceeding with ponderous deliberation through a swamp. A bit of dottle, disturbed by the knife, had lodged deep in the bottom of the bowl. He couldn’t displace it with the blade; he stretched one hand to his table drawer, rummaged in it blindly, and prodded discontentedly in the bottom of the offending briar with the first implement that came to hand. It wasn’t much good for the job, too long and too thick, but he persevered obstinately. The point grated sadly in the charged wood, the rounded knob wagged by Sam’s right ear.
A voice from the doorway said quietly: ‘Sam!’
He dropped his unwieldy tool into the drawer, and shut it to with a quick but calm movement, and turned to face Gisela. She had come in so silently that even the dog had done no more than elevate one shaggy ear and open one disconcerting white eye. She closed the door gently behind her, and stood leaning against it, her dark eyes wide and still.
Sam got to his feet with the rocking motion peculiar to his maimed legs, and the dog, stretched out at his feet, kept its chin possessively across his toes and cocked a wild eye at Gisela. Sam’s eyes had never been more tranquil. He looked at her without a smile, thoughtfully, almost expectantly, and said mildly: ‘Forget something, miss?’
‘Yes, Sam. A letter, for Johnny’s benefit. And for yours, just something I had to say.’
She left the door and came forward a few steps into the room, her gaze steady and kind and sad upon his face.
‘Simply that you needn’t worry. Johnny’ll be all right, I’ll take care of Johnny. He’ll never know anything more from me than he knows now.’
He looked back at her uncomprehendingly, with eyes blank as pebbles, as though she had spoken to him in a foreign language; but she caught some communication that came from deeper within and needed no visible expression, for she smiled wanly, and answered what he would not ask.
‘No, I didn’t lie to him, either. Like you, I didn’t have to. There was no need for me to tell him who it was I saw in the wings that night. He told me. He made it easy for both of us. And that’s the way it must stay, Sam, for Johnny’s sake. He’s lost one man he was fond of, he shan’t lose two. Not for a Marc Chatrier.’
The old man’s eyes, opaque and still, watched her and made no acknowledgement.
‘It was wickedly foolish,’ she said, a tremor shaking her voice for an instant, ‘to use a weapon that pointed so obviously to Codger – when he was close at hand there, and sure to be suspected. But who am I to talk? I did worse than that to him when he was dead. And I did it knowingly, with intent. I thought he wouldn’t grudge it, for Johnny. Or for you.’
He shook his head slightly, and continued mute. What was there to say that wouldn’t be better left unsaid? She was the one who knew how to put things. Some day she’d even get around to working out how carefully he’d installed Codger upstairs with Dolly, and how sick he’d felt when he’d seen him there in the wings, and realised that the poor old fool had slipped off
after him, and left his nice, safe alibi behind him. No need to tell her; when she thought a bit, she’d know.
‘But you can’t foresee everything,’ said Gisela sadly, as though she had followed the mournful trajectory of his thoughts. ‘We’re all so tangled up together, guilty and innocent, there’s no point now in trying to sort it out. Codger’s dead, and the act that killed him was at least his own act. Maybe that half absolves the rest of us. God knows!’
‘I dare say you’re right, miss,’ said Sam, like an old man humouring a child whose chatter he has not even heard properly, much less troubled to understand.
‘So good night, Sam, and don’t worry.’
In the doorway she checked again for an instant, and looked back. ‘Oh, and Sam—’
‘Yes, miss?’
Her dark eyes lingered for a moment upon the table drawer. She looked up into the old man’s face, and the veil of isolation was drawn back from between them for one blinding instant before she turned her eyes away.
‘Get rid of it, Sam,’ she said, rapid and low. ‘Now, before Martin comes on duty. I’ll buy you some proper pipe-cleaners to-morrow.’
She was gone. He heard the outer door swing after her, and her light steps running down in haste to Johnny; and in a moment the car purred away round the forecourt and out on to the road.
Sam pulled the drawer open, and took up with blunt brown fingers the solitary steel knitting-needle that lay among the litter of small things within. She was right, of course, it would have to go. He wondered what they would do with the other one, or what they had already done with it. Something safe and final.
He took his foot, not too brusquely, from under the dog’s reluctant and protesting chin; and Buster, heaving himself out of his half-sleep with a gusty sigh, followed his lame god down to the furnace.
About the Author
Ellis Peters is a pseudonym of Edith Mary Pargeter (1913–1995), a British author whose Chronicles of Brother Cadfael are credited with popularizing the historical mystery. Cadfael, a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey during the first half of the twelfth century, has been described as combining the curious mind of a scientist with the bravery of a knight-errant. The character has been adapted for television, and the books drew international attention to Shrewsbury and its history.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1962 by Edith Pargeter
Cover design by Barbara Brown
Illustrations by Karl Kotas
ISBN: 978-1-4804-4455-3
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