“Stop! stop! stop!” she cried, in an agony of terror. “Oh, do stop, stop! …”
But Leo only laughed, a shocking sound in the now silent Square. For a moment he stood and stared down at Herbert as though he were amazed at what his hand had done. Then Julia dropped on her knees beside Herbert and tried to raise his head; but Leo, turning, vanished swiftly into the shadows, his feet beating out a stumbling rhythm, but his footsteps never paused, and the sound they made was swallowed up in the noise of the High Road.
Julia tried to pull Herbert to the pavement, but he was too heavy, and she crouched down holding his head against her breast. She could see that he was bleeding from a wound on his temple. For a few moments she was too frightened to call for help. She hardly knew, so dazed she was, what she feared; but then she screamed, again and again, this time for help. Alone with that stark terror she still tried to pull herself together. There was Dr. Ackroyd, if only she could get to him, but how could she leave Herbert like this? She screamed again, but not this time in panic, but deliberately for help. The sound of footsteps coming towards her beat upon her ears with an accelerated pace. Help was coming. All might yet be well, thought Julia.
But she was wrong. The dream was over. It had fallen away like a great wave and, sharp and hard, one deed remained; a deed that seemed to have nothing to do with the dream, and that yet in some fantastic fashion was the outcome of it. No one would understand the dream, but they would see the deed, standing out black and angry, a pinnacle of dreadful isolation.
Book Four
No one can say
That the trial was not fair. The trial was fair,
Painfully fair by every rule of law,
And that it was made not the slightest difference.
The law’s our yardstick, and it measures well
Or well enough when there are yards to measure.
Measure a wave with it, measure a fire,
Cut sorrow up in inches, weigh content.
You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough,
But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?
—John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benet.
i
The Nightmare Begins
Two young men came running up breathlessly, guided by her cries.
“What’s the matter?” said one, peering as short-sightedly as Julia herself.
Julia didn’t think about her answer. She had planned nothing; she was only hoping, passionately, that Herbert was not seriously hurt, and that nobody would find out about Leo. She had no room even for resentment that Leo had rushed off and left her to deal with the situation which he himself had created. She was fondling Herbert’s limp hand, trying to feel a responsive pressure in his fingers, and she answered:
“It’s my husband … he’s ill … I think he’s had a fit. Please go quickly … there’s a doctor at the corner of the Square … Dr. Ackroyd. Tell him it’s Mrs. Starling … tell him to hurry. Oh, please be quick.”
The short-sighted man still stood staring, but the other started to run quickly towards Dr. Ackroyd’s house. Julia sat with Herbert’s head against her arm. What had Leo done, what had he done? Why had she always laughed at Herbert’s account of his bad heart?
The short-sighted man knelt down on the pavement beside Julia and tried to feel Herbert’s pulse, but, like most laymen, he had very little idea how this should be done, and feeling the pulse in his own thumb, announced hopefully that Herbert’s pulse was still beating.
Julia hardly heard him. She crouched there in her evening gown, unaware even of the wet stains that mottled the front of it, and felt she must be in a nightmare. It couldn’t be to her, Julia Starling, that this dreadful thing had happened, her husband assaulted, made terribly ill, perhaps dying, and then Leo gone, flying across the Square into the noise and light of the High Road, leaving her there with Herbert a dead weight on her arm and on her soul. It was but a nightmare, till the familiar face of Dr. Ackroyd was bending over her in the light of the street lamp. He lowered Herbert’s head gently, and striking a match, looked at his face and felt his pulse. Then he motioned to one of the young men to lead her away. To the other, a keen-faced alert youth, he spoke quickly:
“Fetch a policeman, You’ll find a man on point-duty on the corner of the High Road. It’s a mortuary case.”
“You mean …” gasped the young man, shocked, yet filled with that interest in the horrible which moves most human beings, “you mean he’s dead?”
“Dead as mutton,” said Dr. Ackroyd. “Hurry.”
The young man, swift as ever, set off down the street, his Burberry flapping behind him. The short-sighted man was trying to detain Julia, but she broke away from him and came up to the doctor.
“Why has he gone away?” she asked. “Can’t they help to carry him in? Look, we’re only three doors away from home.”
“Go ahead, Julia,” said Dr. Ackroyd. “Have you got your key? Right. Open the door.”
Julia fumbled in her little evening bag, found the key, and started running towards the lion-guarded house. Her spirits felt better. Dr. Ackroyd was in charge, he would do something—he must do something—all would yet be well. She ran up the steps and with a shaking hand fitted the key into the lock. She heard voices behind her, but paid no attention. She threw open the door and turned on the light which gave upon the stairs leading up to the Starling flat. There was no sound; Bertha slept heavily, and her room was at the back. Julia ran up, unlocked the door of the flat, turned on the light in the hall, came down again and out across the little paved garden and through the gate.
There were five men round Herbert now, making a little crowd, that had swelled with the horrid persistence of flies or of vultures. She started to run towards them, her breath coming short and fast, her heart feeling as though it would knock her to pieces. With a sudden panic she saw that one of the men was a policeman—a policeman … why had they called a policeman? She tried to take a pull on herself, and her voice sounded fairly natural as she spoke.
“I’ve opened the flat, Dr. Ackroyd. Can you bring him up?”
“No, Julia, I’m afraid we can’t,” said the old doctor.
“Why not?”
“He’ll need more immediate care than he can get at home. I’ll take you back, Julia.”
Julia stared about her. There was the policeman; there were the two young men who had come to her help. There was another man in pyjamas, a man with a bald head and a brown pointed beard and a dark overcoat, who kept repeating: “I heard her cry out, ‘Stop! Stop!’ I heard her cry out.”
Julia stared at him, and wondered what he was doing there.
“I came as quickly as I could,” the bald-headed man went on. “But my wife made me put on some things first.”
The policeman stood up, oddly immovable, looking more like a statue than a man, the lamplight glinting on his silver buttons and throwing a shadow across his eyes beneath his helmet; and beneath it his ruddy cheeks swelled out like a child’s balloon.
“I must use the telephone,” he announced in slow, husky accents. “Who has a telephone?”
“I’ve always wanted a telephone,” said the bald-headed man, “but my wife said I should get no rest from business if I were on the telephone at home.”
“Why, we’ve got a telephone,” said Julia.
“Of course, yes,” said Dr. Ackroyd. “Julia, take the constable to telephone from the flat. We shall want an ambulance.”
“Oh, quick,” said Julia, “quick. Do hurry.”
Did policemen ever hurry? she reflected bitterly as the heavy, even steps followed her fleeting feet along the pavement.
The constable rang up the police station. “Station officer, please,” said the policeman in his thick, husky voice, and then after a moment: “Ambulance wanted, sir, Saint Clement’s Square. Got a body to take to the mortuary.
”
Julia gave a scream, and once she had screamed she found she couldn’t stop. She screamed, and screamed again, till the sound was so horrid in her own ears that she had to hold her hands over her mouth, and still the screams went on behind her hands, forcing their way past them like animals forcing their way through a fence.
There was a sound of a door opening, and Bertha, wrapped in her dark red woollen dressing-gown, appeared at the end of the passage.
“What’s the matter? What’s all this noise, Julia? Has there been an accident? What’s the policeman doing here?”
“Gentleman fallen dead on the corner of the Square,” said the constable.
He looked at Julia, as though to ask who Bertha might be, but Julia paid no heed to him. She sat down suddenly on the hall chair, and the blood seemed to have left her legs, which were suddenly full of pins and needles instead. She clutched the arms of the chair and wondered whether she were going to faint. Why had it to happen like this? Why had Leo had to hit Herbert? Why couldn’t he have died without?
She heard the voices of Bertha and the constable beating about her like dark birds. Then the flat seemed to become full of people; the policeman began to take down names and addresses in his book—that of the short-sighted man, of the keen-faced man, of the bald-headed, bearded man, of Dr. Ackroyd, and Bertha herself, and there were other people there, too—the person called the station officer, to whom the constable had telephoned, and who had by now arrived.
Julia, her legs still feeling very weak, went out through to the balcony and saw that men were lifting Herbert’s body into the ambulance. “A heart attack, I think,” she heard Dr. Ackroyd saying from the hall, “and in falling he seems to have caught the edge of the kerb. He’s bleeding slightly from the temple.”
Julia breathed a deep sigh of relief from her troubled heart. She had always heard you died if you were hit on the temple. Leo’s blows had been on the back of Herbert’s head.
“If he fell,” it was Bertha’s voice speaking now, strident with anger as well as grief, “I believe she had a hand in it.”
“I didn’t,” said Julia, “I never touched him. He just fell down; I think he was feeling ill.”
Everybody turned towards her. The light clicked on, and she realised she had been speaking from the dark drawing-room to the little crowd in the lighted hall.
“I swear my brother hasn’t died naturally,” said Bertha. “Look at him again … look at him again.”
“I saw nothing except a slight wound on his temple, where he had evidently hit the kerb. There’s blood on the kerb as well,” said Dr. Ackroyd.
The station officer looked at him. “Better have another look, doctor, before the ambulance goes off.”
Julia heard their feet going down the stairs, then down the steps across the little garden. She sat, her throat dry and constricted, for what seemed hours, but what she realised was probably only about ten minutes. Presently the two men came back.
“I’ll have to ask you to come to the station, Mrs. Starling,” said the officer. “And you—Miss Starling, isn’t it? We have the names and addresses of everybody else. Get a taxi.”
A taxi that sounded like an antiquated sewing-machine presently came chug-chugging slowly up to the front door, and Julia climbed into it, and had to sit next to Bertha—a hated contact that made her shrink up into herself. Dr. Ackroyd did not come with them. His name and address were known. Another doctor had arrived on the scene, somebody called the divisional surgeon. He appeared mysteriously in the chug-chugging taxi. Julia vaguely remembered there had been some telephoning in the interval.
For the first quarter of an hour Julia would not have known that she was in a police station. She might, as far as the look of things went, have been in a Tube station. The walls were covered with brown glazed tiles half-way up, then cream-washed. Everywhere there was shiny wood, and doors and benches. Behind a desk sat a man taking down particulars. She sat on a bench feeling utterly limp, and then she was taken into another room, and a man began to question her, all sorts of questions that she didn’t know how to answer.
Was she sure that her husband had fallen down?
“Quite, quite sure,” said Julia. “He just gave a sort of cry, and seemed to stumble, and fell down.”
“Did he fall forwards or backwards?”
Julia tried hard to think. Yes, he’d fallen forward, she remembered. “He fell forwards, but then he rolled over the edge of the pavement on to his back.”
“And what did you do?”
“I called for help. I could see he was very ill. I thought he must have hit his head.”
“Why did you think he had hit his head?”
“There was blood on the pavement.”
“There’s blood on your dress now. How did it get there?”
“I tried to sit him up, and held him against me while I was calling for help.”
“Did people come?”
“Yes, two young men. I sent one for Dr. Ackroyd, and then the policeman telephoned … and the ambulance came.”
“You’re quite sure that’s how it all happened?”
“Yes,” said Julia, gaining confidence. “I think I am, but I was very dazed.”
“You were dazed? Why were you dazed?”
“I was so frightened. It all happened so quickly. You are frightened when anybody falls down suddenly.”
“Well, then, you say you were walking home together. Where had you been?”
Julia told him wearily, and described the route they had taken home.
“And then your husband suddenly cried out and fell down?”
“He knocked up against me first, and I tried to hold him up.”
“There was nobody else there?”
“Oh no, nobody,” said Julia quickly.
“You know somebody called Leonard Carr, don’t you?” said the officer suddenly.
What had Bertha been telling them?
“Yes.”
“Tell us about him, Mrs. Starling.”
“There isn’t much to tell, really. He’s on an aircraft-carrier. When he comes home he stays with his people.”
“He sees a good bit of you when he comes home, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, at least, I don’t know.”
“Come now, Mrs. Starling, does he see a great deal of you or does he not?”
“Not always.”
“Does he see you whenever he can?”
“Not always,” said Julia, with sudden bitterness.
“Anyway, you see each other, shall we say, once a week?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Wouldn’t it be oftener than that—two or three times a week?”
“I don’t know … sometimes.”
“Hadn’t he and your husband had a quarrel?”
“They had once.”
“Why?”
“My husband was jealous.”
“Oh, your husband was jealous, was he? He didn’t approve of your friendship with Leonard Carr?”
“It wasn’t that so much. He was jealous of everything—always.”
“He was jealous of Leonard Carr in particular, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, I suppose he was.”
“What was the quarrel about?”
“It was nothing really—it was very silly.”
“Never mind it being silly, tell us what it was about, Mrs. Starling.”
“We had been to the pictures—Mr. Carr and I, I mean—and when we got home I asked him up to have a whisky and soda with my husband.”
“So you didn’t keep your friendship secret from your husband?”
“Oh no,” said Julia eagerly. “He knew about it, that’s why he was jealous.”
“I see. And what happened on this particular evening?”
“My husband
began storming at us both—I forget what he said. Anyway, he got hold of me and threw me against the bookcase and hurt my arm, and Mr. Carr was very angry.”
“Your sister-in-law came down the stairs, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but I had got Mr. Carr to go then.”
“When did all this happen, Mrs. Starling?”
“On his last leave—his Christmas leave. It would be four days before Christmas, the twenty-first.”
So it went on, stupid questions and answers. Julia felt if she could have seen the men’s faces she could have answered better. She had her distance glasses in her evening bag; she had been using them at the theatre. But how could she take them out and put them on? She wouldn’t look pretty, and helpless, and young any longer. She would look cautious, clever. She mustn’t look that whatever she did.
What was the man seated opposite to her saying now?
“I expect you would like to sign all that, Mrs. Starling?”
“Well—yes—if you like,” said Julia nervously.
A man who had been busy writing read aloud everything Julia had said, but all in one piece, as though it had come out of a book. Then this statement was read over to her. Yes, it was just as she had said, but it ended: It is voluntary, and it is true. She signed it. Then a policeman took her to the matron’s room, and told her she would have to spend the night at the police station. She stared aghast. For the first time the knowledge that she was no longer free pressed itself upon her.
The matron appeared—a cosy, pleasant-looking woman, with a quiet manner, who made her up a bed with blankets on a couch. It was horrible not to be able to undress—not to have sheets. Julia lay watching the dimmed light, unable to sleep, her pulses ticking all over her, as though she were a vast conglomeration of city clocks, all signalling the one to the other. Once or twice the matron came in and looked at her, and Julia closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Towards dawn she fell into an uneasy doze, but after she had slept for about half an hour, noises of cleaning and of doors opening and shutting waked her. The life of the police station had begun.
A Pin to See the Peepshow Page 36