The Elderbrook Brothers

by Gerald Bullet

  In a state of specious calm he mounted his bicycle and set off. The world about him was vivid and beautiful. The fields, the hedgerows, Mrs Makin’s cottage, the Winsted corner with its triangle of cropped grass, geese strutting on the green at Sawston End, the narrow lane past Foxcombes overhung with sycamores, the Angler’s Arms by Stedham, and the white ribbon of road that ran across the peaty gorse-covered common which he had explored as a child: these features of an oft-travelled route had for him this morning a startlingly intimate quality. It was as if he were looking on them for the last time. Every one of the half-dozen people he encountered on the road recognized and greeted him. He responded heartily, gratefully, and caught himself wondering, for a crazy second, whether they would come to see him hanged. That was his one lapse from a mental calm studiously maintained. If he sighed, it was with the strain of that artificial tension. If he regretted anything, which he was loth to admit, his regret was narrowly circumscribed: he could wish himself guiltless, he could wish himself confessed and shriven, but he could not wish Caidster were alive again. The air of morning was the cleaner and sweeter for that death, the sky fairer, the sunshine more invigorating, the heart lighter: or would have been, had he himself had no hand in it. His satisfaction in a dirty job well done stumbled always into this anticlimax. If only it were done, but not done by him, how blessed life would be! If only he could believe that it had indeed been, as so nearly it was, an accident! The area of his guilt was small, the merest pinpoint in time. Five seconds, no more, had made him a murderer. It was an odd, an incredible notion; and true to his resolve he put it aside. There would be a time for such thoughts hereafter. But not now.

  As he turned into the main street of Midlingford the hands of the church-tower clock stood at ten to ten. He was in nice time, neither too early nor too late. He wheeled his bicycle round to the back of the Town Hall and lodged it in the rack which the Rural District Council had recently provided. He remembered idly that in 1918 there had been an epidemic of bicycle-stealing, and he decided he would mention that piece of local history to the first person he encountered, in order to show that he was perfectly at ease. But walking back to the entrance he forgot all about that plan in the surprise of finding no one there. The door yielded to his push and he found himself in a stone-paved passage, with a stairway ahead and shut doors on either side. The place was draughty, as he had predicted; and the long wooden bench, placed for the convenience of just such visitors as he, did not invite him. He strode up and down, startled by the noise of his own boots on the stone floor. The place was cold as a tomb. He was tempted to go on tiptoe, lest the dead should rise and clay-coloured faces come peering round the doors to right and left of him. He looked at his watch and was astonished to see that little more than a minute had passed since he came in. Summoning his courage he knocked at every door within sight. He felt diffident and nervous, like a schoolboy calling on his headmaster, and was relieved to get no response. He wondered if he had come to the right place, and was angry wit}i himself for being—and at his age—so callow and ineffectual. Perhaps keeping your suspect waiting was part of the technique. But there was still, he chided himself, five minutes to go. I’m losing my nerve, he said: that’s what I’m doing. Better get outside again.

  On the steps, as he went out, he met his friendly policeman coming in.

  ‘Good morning, sergeant. Jackson I think you said?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Glad you’re early, Mr Elderbrook. I’d like you to slip down the road with me if you don’t mind.’

  ‘What’s the idea?’ said Matthew, a shade too heartily. ‘Can’t get a drink at this time of day. You ought to know that, Jackson.’ He laughed.

  ‘Too true, sir. Wish we could. Sharp this morning. But nice and bright.’ Already, with two fingers on Matthew’s elbow, he was piloting him down the road. ‘It’s only a few steps,’ said Jackson smoothly. ‘I can do with cold weather myself. Always could, from a boy. So long as we don’t get rain. That’s what I always say.’

  When they had passed the turning to the police station Matthew said:

  ‘Where the deuce are you taking me?’

  ‘It’s just here, in Slocombe Turn,’ said Jackson, guiding him round a corner into a steep and very narrow lane.

  ‘What is?’ Matthew asked impatiently.

  ‘The mortuary. It won’t take us a minute.’

  ‘The mortuary?’ Matthew felt his belly heave. But a sudden anger saved him. ‘Third degree. With smiles, eh?’

  The remark seemed to be lost on Sergeant Jackson. ‘When it came to swearing, Probert thought we’d better have a second witness, just to make sure. And since you’re here-’

  ‘I’m here for the inquest, not for this sort of thing.’ He came to a dead halt. ‘It must be past ten o’clock,’ he added. ‘It is,’ he said, taking out his watch.

  ‘That’s right, sir. We’ve got half an hour.’

  ‘You said ten o’clock yesterday.’

  ‘So I did,’ Jackson agreed. ‘But they’re making it ten thirty, to suit the Coroner. Half an hour we’ve got. And look, Mr Elderbrook, it won’t take half a minute.’

  Matthew shrugged his shoulders. It would be unsafe to resist further.

  ‘Well … have it your own way.’

  § 16

  MATTHEW sat in the court-room, waiting for the proceedings to begin. In his mind a stunned silence alternated with chattering activity. To avoid further trouble he had declared himself ready to swear to the identification; but what they had shown him under the sheet in the mortuary was not recognizably Caidster, was not recognizably anyone. I didn’t do that. Not a quarter of it. The train did that. You can’t frighten me. Jackson caught him by the arm. ‘Steady, old man!’ Someone had laboured to give the corpse a meretricious dignity, with grotesque results. But back in the open air he felt better. ‘I shall be all right,’ he said, swaying slightly. Jackson had surprisingly produced a small metal flask from his hip pocket. ‘So we’re having a drink after all,’ Matthew said. ‘Why not give him one? Looked as though he could do with it.’ He did not listen to Jackson’s soothing reply, and presently they were walking up the road together, returning the way they had come. ‘Wonder if my bicycle’s still there,’ said Matthew. ‘Remember how they used to disappear in the war, Jackson?’ It comforted him to have got that remark off his mind.

  And now, still with time to spare, he waited for the proceedings to begin. The dragging movement of time was the worst thing he had yet endured: it seemed as if years had passed since he left Upmarden this morning. He shut his eyes for a moment, but quickly opened them again, for with shut eyes he found he could not control what he saw. Nor, if he dozed, could he hold his thoughts in check. It was imperative to keep very wide awake. He felt that he had been waiting all his life for this inquest to open, seated on this bench and facing what he could not help thinking of as the stage. There were steps leading up to the witness-box, and the seat of justice, equally elevated, dominated the whole scene. The hands of the courtroom clock stayed so long at ten twenty-seven that he felt sure it must have stopped, and he was saying so to Jackson his neighbour when a door opened at the back of the ‘stage’ and an elderly gentleman came in, unwound a green muffler from his neck, and within absent-minded nod to the assembled company, who stood up to testify their respect, sat himself down in the seat of authority and began cleaning his spectacles with a large silk handkerchief. While finger and thumb rubbed the lenses he screwed up his eyes at the papers set in front of him.

  Presently a conversation began between the Coroner and a senior police officer; It went on for some moments before Matthew realized that the inquest for which he had waited so long was actually in progress. He had braced himself for something theatrical, but to these officials that thing in the mortuary was merely part of a dull day’s work. With a glance towards the jury the Coroner mentioned, more to himself than to them, that his present business and theirs was to find a verdict on the death of a person known as Caidster,
other names unknown: at which point the police officer took up the tale, remarking that the identification would be sworn to by two witnesses and that the Police Surgeon was ready to offer an opinion on the cause of death. George Faussett, railwayman, deposed to finding the body at such-and-such a point on the line, and in reply to a question said that the last train to use that line (before the finding of the body) would be the 12.30 express from London to Mercester, which passed that point at approximately 4.55 every morning except Sunday. William Richard Probert, a railway porter employed at Hitcham Halt, said the body looked to him like the man called Caidster. Asked did he mean that Caidster was not the man’s real name, he said no one knew much about him. Asked if he were sure that the body was that of the man known as Caidster he said that was how it looked to him but being in such a state as it was he wouldn’t like to say not for certain.

  ‘On that point, sir,’ said the police officer, ‘we have another witness, Mr Elderbrook.’

  The Coroner looked up from his papers. ‘The employer of the deceased man, I think?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In that case it will be convenient to take Mr Elderbrook’s evidence a little later. Let’s hear what Dr Trevick has to say.’

  Dr Trevick was the Police Surgeon. He entered the box and took the oath with an air of patient exasperation. He said that he first saw the body at nine o’clock yesterday morning. He judged that it had been dead for eight or ten hours. There was a fracture of the cervical spine and a severe injury to the skull. He could not tell whether these two injuries had been simultaneous or not: either could have been the cause of death. There were numerous minor injuries. He examined for knife wounds and bullet wounds and found nothing.

  ‘Were you aware at the time that the body had been found on the railway line?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And were the injuries such as you would expect in a man run over by a train?’

  ‘They were perfectly consistent with that hypothesis.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor. Just one other point. The time of the death. You put it at some eight or ten hours before your examination began. That would make it either one hour after midnight or one hour before midnight?’

  ‘Or any time between those hours,’ said Trevick, smiling wearily.

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘You understand, sir, that the figures are largely conjectural.’

  ‘Perfectly. But there’s a little difficulty here. If we take your lower estimate as a minimum, it rules out the supposition that the man was killed by the fast train from London at approximately 4.55.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘You are definitely of the opinion that death occurred earlier than 4.55?’

  ‘Definitely. But it’s only an opinion. I may be wrong. I can only say …’

  Between witness and coroner, himself a medical man, there ensued a cosy technical discussion.

  I can explain everything, said Matthew. Let me tell you how it happened. The doctor’s quite right. How wonderful science is. With great difficulty he refrained from saying these things aloud.

  ‘Very well. Let us,’ said the Coroner, ‘suppose for a moment that the man was killed by one train, and his dead body run over, some hours later, by another. Would the condition of the remains allow you to accept that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  George Faussett, recalled, said that there was a train went through Hitcham Halt, a matter of five minutes from where the body was found, at 11.15 on the night in question; and Matthew, before he had time to realize the meaning of that, heard his own name called. He was in the witness-box for something less than two minutes, and an open verdict was returned almost before he got back to his seat. The sudden collapse of his fear shook the earth under him. And he was still afraid.

  § 17

  In the evening of that day, drawn by the smell of excitement, the Haslams drove over. Though Matthew and Roger were well acquainted, and seldom a market-day passed without their meeting, the two families visited each other infrequently. Edie Haslam was a small, lean-faced woman, with bright eyes, faded brown hair, and a mouth deceptively meek. The passing years made little impression on her resolute limited personality: at a first encounter it remained an open question whether she was a worn thirty-five or a well-preserved fifty. If she had beauty it was perhaps in her well-arched eyebrows; if she had a noticeable blemish it was the discreet mole situated within half an inch of her left eye. It was this very thing, however, that made a man look twice, and yet again: the sum of such lookings had woven a snare for Roger some fifteen years ago. The Haslams arrived at the front door, to be anxiously received by Ann, just as Matthew, at the back of the house, was sweeping the farmyard dirt from his boots with a garden broom.

  ‘Well I never!’ said Ann. ‘I thought I heard someone drive up. Come in, do. Will the pony be all right?’

  ‘Ay, she’s a good lass,’ said Roger. ‘Unless you’d like us to bring her in too?’

  Everybody laughed at his little joke, and for a moment it was quite like old times. Matthew came in and the party settled down to talk. Though she kept her face turned towards the guests, Ann was more aware of Matthew than of anyone else in the room. She noticed both that he was very tired and that he seemed unable to keep himself still. He fidgeted in his chair, almost as though he had a flea on him somewhere. She had planned to unburden her mind to him this evening, and so, because she wished the Haslams elsewhere, she was a trifle over-emphatic in hospitality.

  ‘It is nice,’ she said, more than once. ‘After such a long time too.’

  She knew, and Matthew knew, why they had come tonight. And Roger, rosy and twinkling as ever, was sheepishly aware of their knowing. Only loyalty to a pair of good eyebrows prevented his saying outright that it was Edie who had insisted on coming: he knew that Matthew was not the sort to relish an inquest or enjoy talking about it.

  ‘Didn’t see you at market today, Matthew,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t you, Roger? Come to think of it I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Don’t be such a tease, Matt,’ said Ann, laughing. She had detected some malice in his irony. ‘Matthew had to go to Midlingford,’ she explained.

  ‘Did he?’ said Edie, brightening.

  ‘There was an inquest on that poor man Caidster. Of course you heard about that? Run over by a train.’

  ‘We did hear something,’ Edie admitted. ‘What a thing to happen! We were so sorry.’ She looked straight at Matthew. He thought he read a challenge in her wide-eyed innocence. ‘How nasty for you all!’ she said, lowering her glance.

  ‘But how nice for you, Edie,’ said Matthew, ‘to have something to gossip about! How nice for everyone,’ he went on, trying to keep his voice pleasant, ‘when some wretched fellow kills himself! Makes a nice change in a dead-alive district like ours. And in the winter months, with nothing much doing on the farm, it’s a real godsend.’

  The silence that followed was broken by Edie Haslam saying composedly:

  ‘What a way to talk, Matthew! But we know you don’t mean it.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Matthew. He shrugged his shoulders, smiling painfully.

  ‘It was the greatest surprise to us,’ she said complacently, ‘because, do you know, we’d never even heard of the man, let alone knew he was working for you. Everybody else seemed to know, but not us: which was very funny seeing how near we are. We knew you had Patchett, and Edgcombe (isn’t it?), and Willy Hughes. But never a word of Caidster. Do you think it was suicide then, Matthew? I hear they brought it in death by misadventure. Do you think it was suicide?’

  ‘No,’ said Matthew. ‘I think it was murder.’

  At sight of her gaping astonishment he felt an angry pleasure in what he had said, and was assaulted by a scarcely resistible temptation: to tell her everything he knew; to pile truth upon her platter, morsel by morsel, till she had a surfeit of sensation. He had never disliked Mrs Roger. Her ferreting curiosity had always mildly amused him. He pretended to himself that i
t amused him now.

  ‘Would you like to know why?’ he said, looking from face to face.

  Ann intervened. ‘Come and help me make you some coffee, Edie,’ she said, jumping up. Don’t mind Matthew’s teasing. It’s a good job we’re old friends. My word it is!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Edie sweetly.

  In the doorway she turned her head, to give Matthew a backward glance; but Ann drove her forward, the door closed, and the two men were alone.

  ‘Well, Roger? Did you have a good market-day?’

  ‘So-so. What d’you think my three heifers fetched? Guess now.’

  Casually naming a low figure, in order to give Roger the pleasure of surprising him, Matthew went over to the sideboard and poured some whisky into two glasses. He carried one of them across to Roger, swinging the siphon in his other hand. ‘Say when, Roger.’ Roger said when and went on talking about the things nearest his heart. Matthew listened with only one ear: the other was attending to his own thoughts. He was glad, now, of Roger’s company and soothed by his easy, sensible talk; but he wished he did not feel so tired. His mind was a mass of wincing memories, and his body ached with the effort of trying to fend them off. In particular there was a vague, deep-seated pain in his back. He had begun to be conscious of it a few minutes after the announcement of the verdict that morning, and it had been nagging him for attention ever since. He wanted very much to go to bed, to sleep, to forget. There were hours to be got through before that could happen, and meanwhile here was Roger, good simple-hearted Roger, prattling comfortably about crops and market prices.