by Nina Bawden
When I turned back to the room again, Rella had woken up in her chair by the fire. She must have spoken to Walker without my hearing it because of the tap running, and he had half-turned round to her, and was listening with his head slightly on one side.
Walker said, and he sounded sad and gentle, “You see, it’s out of our hands now.”
I dried my hands and went to the table. I said, “You didn’t expect the verdict, did you?”
He smiled at me in the same, friendly way. “I was afraid it might happen,” he said. “It’s not often the jury take the bit between their teeth, but they do sometimes.”
“Then you don’t think that he killed her?” said Rella. Her eyes went very dark, and she clenched her hands together. “I thought that in England this sort of thing could not happen. I thought that in England you did not arrest innocent men.”
“I’m afraid it sometimes happens,” Walker said. He looked at her thoughtfully.
From a long way, I heard my own voice saying, “If you don’t think Henry did it, whom do you suspect?”
His eyes were very wary. He said, “I did not say that I thought Mr. Sykes innocent. I only meant that the police investigations were not complete.”
His face was as cold as steel. I heard Rella give a choked sort of gasp, and then she ran from the room. My knees felt watery, and I sat down quickly opposite Walker at the table. He was watching me in an interested way. I wished he would take his damnably curious eyes off my face, and I said, without really meaning to, “You know, I wish I knew what you were really up to.”
He smiled deprecatingly, and looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I upset the young lady. It is very difficult for us, sometimes. We don’t like arresting people, you know, unless we’re quite sure of our ground. Only sometimes it’s thrust upon us.” His tone was conversational and friendly.
I felt braver. I said, “You don’t really think that he did it, do you?”
“You know that I can’t discuss that,” he said. He was silent for a minute, and then he went on. “One of the farm workers has told us that he saw Mrs. Sykes in the laboratory in the granary. It was just before Christmas. He saw her come out with something in her hand.”
“Well?” I said.
“I believe that she told the child that his mother had something that would kill the dog,” he said. “And you remember that we found arsenic in Mr. Sykes’s drawer. It is possible that Mrs. Sykes put it there.”
“I think it unlikely,” I said.
“The child had suffered from a bout of sickness quite consistent with arsenical poisoning,” said Walker.
“Why should she do that?” I asked. I hoped my voice sounded casual, but I rather doubted it.
He said, in a troubled voice, “I rather hoped that you might be able to suggest something.”
I wished very much that I could hit his smug, suburban face. I said, “I don’t know why you should expect me to know anything about it. I had only just arrived when the dog died. I had not seen Mrs. Sykes for a long time.”
He sighed. “I had hoped you would try to help us,” he said.
I said, “If you’re trying to work out a case against Henry, showing that he killed his wife because he was afraid she was trying to poison her nephew, you can do it without any help from me. I don’t think it’s true, and I don’t think you would make any jury believe that it was true. And if all you want is to reassure yourself that you haven’t got to think about the arsenic any more, because it was all Venetia’s doing, you can do so, as far as I’m concerned. She’s dead, and it can’t hurt her. You can blacken her character and make a convenience of doing so, if you wish.”
I was conscious that I sounded unbearably pompous, and I hated myself fur it. It made it worse to see the smile on Walker’s face, as though I was giving him what he wanted. I was so angry that the only thing I could see was Walker’s face, the bright eyes, and the smile on the delicate mouth. I leant across the table until his face was very near to mine. I knew I was shouting, and I didn’t care.
I said, “You’re terribly stupid, aren’t you? You always were, even before, when you thought it was Venetia who killed Caroline. You thought she’d done it … oh, you hadn’t any evidence, I know, but it wasn’t that that stopped you. You couldn’t really believe that any child could do such a thing. Even after you knew she was different from other people there was a barrier in your smug, stupid mind, that made it impossible for you to believe that she could do such a thing. And now you think that she meant to murder Sebastian, but you can’t think why, so you don’t quite believe that she did. Go on and try to twist the whole thing into a noose that you can stick round Henry’s neck. That would be the sort of motive you’d understand. But I can tell you one thing. If Venetia had meant to murder Sebastian—and I don’t know whether she did or didn’t, because I wasn’t here—you’d never know why. You could try for a hundred years, and you still wouldn’t be within spitting distance of understanding. Do you see? She wouldn’t have been what she was, if it were possible for a stupid policeman with a mediocre mind to understand her.”
I don’t know whether this is exactly what I said, or not. I can’t remember very clearly; I only know that it is the substance of what I said.
Then Brigid came into the room, and Walker turned away from me and took the suitcase that she held out to him. He told her when she could go and visit Henry in a quiet and gentle voice, and then he said, “There is no need for any of you to stay here if you don’t wish to. You will be called at the trial in due course, and you will let me know your addresses.”
He went out with Brigid, still talking, and the kitchen door closed behind them.
Chapter Fourteen
The sun was shining through the morning fog as we drove down to the county jail. On the side of the road that was shaded from the sun, the twisted spikes of the hawthorn were still sharply edged with white. It was a clean and lovely morning; it felt like the beginning of a new world.
Brigid sat beside me. She had not spoken since we left the house. I knew her face was blotched with tears, but curiously her unhappiness did not move me any longer. I felt very free.
The clock in the market hall struck eleven as we drove into the town. The notes fell clear and sweet in the still morning, and the streets were colour-washed in a fragile, silver light. The prison was an inoffensive, pretty place, built of red brick, with white, painted windows, and a restrained Queen Anne portico. There was a winter jasmine growing up one of the pillars; I wondered if Henry had noticed it.
They were very polite inside the jail. The front of the house was the police station, and the cells were at the back in a gaunt, Victorian addition to the original building which managed, in spite of its smallness, to look overgrown and clumsy. We went across a square, concrete courtyard, and a policeman showed us into a waiting-room that was newly painted and had framed maps hanging round the walls. He said, “It’s the lady to see Mr. Sykes, isn’t it?”
I said “Yes,” and he took Brigid away and left me alone in the room. There were some magazines on a table but they had a shiny, untouched look about them, so I lit a cigarette and then felt that perhaps I shouldn’t smoke, because there were no ash-trays and the room looked so well swept. I compromised by flicking the ash into my turn-ups, and throwing the stub out of the small, barred window that looked on to the courtyard.
I wondered what Brigid and Henry would say to each other. I thought that if I were in Henry’s position, Brigid would be the last person I should want to see, and then I remembered that he was in love with Brigid. I decided that she would probably burst into tears, and that he would pat her on the shoulder in a gruff, manly way, and there would be tears in his own eyes. It would be very well bred, and like a scene from one of those restrained English films. I smoked several more cigarettes and then Brigid came back. She was alone; she looked very quiet, and uncertain of herself.
I gave her a chair, and said, “How did it go?”
She frowned, as though her thoughts weren’t clear to herself. “I don’t know, Paul,” she said. “It wasn’t at all as I’d expected. He seemed so … ordinary.” She played with her gloves. “It didn’t seem real. I half expected him to be able to come away with me, it was awfully hard to realise that he couldn’t. He didn’t say very much. Just a few private things, and that he was being looked after very well. He said I was to tell Dorry that they didn’t make porridge as well as she did … I nearly cried when he said that. I tried to talk about what there was to do, but he didn’t seem to want to. He said I wasn’t to worry, and that he hoped I’d stay on at the house with Dorry, because she’d feel lost without someone to look after. I shall stay, of course. I want to, and even if I didn’t, there isn’t anywhere else I could go. The case is coming up at the Assizes … that’s in a month’s time. Then the policeman said I had to go … he’d been outside the door all the time, though I don’t think he could hear what we were saying. So Henry kissed me good-bye. It was awful, Paul, walking away and leaving him behind.”
She was out of breath by now. I asked her whether there was anything Henry wanted us to send him. She gave a gasp of dismay. “Goodness, I forgot. How dreadfully thoughtless of me. But you’ll be able to ask him, won’t you?”
I said quickly, “But I’m not going to see him. I don’t expect he’d want me to, you know. The copper will take a message, I expect, though if there had been anything he wanted he would have asked you himself.”
She looked distressed. “But he wants to see you. He said so. He said he’d asked whether it was all right for him to have two visitors, and they’d said it was.”
She looked anxiously at my face. “You do want to see him, don’t you, Paul?”
“Oh, of course,” I lied, hoping that she couldn’t guess what I really felt about it. She had got a great deal more intelligent about that sort of thing just lately.
I hoped that the policeman would come and say that I couldn’t see Henry after all, but he didn’t. He came in, and said, “If you don’t mind waiting here, ma’am, I’ll take the gentleman along now.”
So I had to follow him along a corridor to the room where Henry was waiting for me. There was a hollow feeling inside me. It was a small room, and very bare, with two wooden chairs and a table. Henry was standing with his back to the door and he turned round when I came in. He looked surprisingly normal, and his voice when he spoke was aggressive, and much too loud, the way it was whenever he was embarrassed.
“Come along in, old man,” he said. “This is where I receive guests. Purely temporary, of course, but you can’t have everything. They don’t do you badly here, on the whole.”
I said, “You don’t need to put on an act, you know,” and then I wished I hadn’t said anything, because he looked like a dog that expects to be kicked.
“Sorry, old man,” he said in a lower voice. “Bad habit of mine. Always too jolly when I don’t know where I stand.”
I guessed it was Venetia who had told him that. I didn’t think he could have thought it up for himself.
There was a silence which hung heavily between us. I offered him a cigarette, but he shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ll have a pipe.” He fumbled in his pocket, found his pipe, and filled it. He took a long time about it, as though he was trying to make up his mind what he wanted to say to me.
I said bluntly, “Was there anything special you wanted me to do?”
“Not really,” he said. “Just thought you’d like to talk a bit. Tell you what, I did wonder whether you’d be able to keep an eye on Biddy for a day or two. She’s … not really used to this business yet.”
“I was going to London,” I said. “Not till tomorrow, of course.”
I hadn’t really thought about it till then, but now it seemed, suddenly, the only course to take. I added, because he didn’t say anything, “I’ve got a job, you know, and I gather there isn’t any official reason why I should stay. I’ll be keeping in touch, of course.”
He said hastily, “Of course, old man. I wasn’t thinking. Of course you’ll have to get back. Selfish of me.”
He meant it too; he wasn’t being sarcastic. I felt a swine, so I said, “I might be able to do something for you in town. If you’d like me to.”
He thanked me profusely, but it was clear that there wasn’t really anything I could do, although he made a great show of giving me a few minor commissions and then saying that they weren’t really important and I wasn’t to go out of my way to do any of them. Then there didn’t seem to be any more to say until I remembered what Walker had been talking about the night before. My mouth went a bit dry, and I said, “Henry, why were you worried about Sebastian?”
Something rather cautious came into his face. He said, “Oh, I dunno. It was just a hunch I had.”
I said, “Walker seems to have got the idea that you thought Venetia might do him some harm. I think he’s got it into his head that she put the box of arsenic in your drawer.”
I felt a good deal better when I’d said it. But Henry didn’t look surprised. He just looked thoughtful.
“Thanks, old man,” he said. “I wasn’t sure, you know. It wasn’t anything I could explain. I didn’t know about the box, you see, except when they found it. I knew I hadn’t put it there. And no one else would have done, would they?”
“Well …” I said, and then I stopped. I didn’t know what to say. Henry smiled at me miserably.
“You must think me a pretty stupid sort of chap,” he said. “But you see, it wasn’t very clear at the time. It was only a kind of feeling I had … that Sebastian wasn’t safe. At first, I thought I was imagining things, and then, when he was ill at Christmas I thought it might be best if he could go away to school. I tried to persuade Biddy, but I’m not much of a hand at that sort of thing, and I made a hash of it. I couldn’t tell her why I really thought he ought to go. I should have sounded pretty silly, trying to explain a feeling that I couldn’t understand myself. So then I told the kid that he ought to be careful what he ate. Tried to make a game of it. But he was too sharp for that. He asked a lot of damned awkward questions. I found myself getting hot under the collar, I can tell you. In the end I had to tell him to keep his mouth shut about it … put him on his honour, and that sort of thing.”
He looked at me in a worried sort of way, and I took a deep breath and said, “Look, Henry. You might as well tell me the lot, as we’ve got so far. Why did you think such a thing was possible in the first place?”
He looked very bewildered. “Honestly,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you if I tried. Not exactly how the whole thing started, I mean. When Biddy and the kid arrived, it wasn’t in my head at all, and after they’d been with us for about a month, there it was, like a kind of nightmare. The kind without any shape or meaning. I’d give you chapter and verse if I could. But odd things … the sort I could tell you, wouldn’t mean anything by themselves … unless they meant I was crazy. She didn’t like him from the beginning. She used to hide bits of his Meccano when he was in the middle of building something. And if he was reading a book, and left it about, she’d hide it. And sometimes she’d just look at him. I could tell you a lot of stuff like that, and it wouldn’t make any sense … not if you tried to tie it up with this poisoning business.”
“She’d never liked children,” I said. “I think, perhaps, there was a reason for it.”
“Do you mean that she couldn’t run about with them, when she was a kid herself?”
I nodded. It was the simple explanation. There was no need to ferret after a deeper one. I said, “Was there anything behind it all? Anything explicable, I mean?”
He looked at me. “You mean, did she have any reason to harm the kid, apart from just not liking him?”
I nodded, and he chewed at his pipe for a bit before he said, “I think there was a reason. I’ll try and tell you, if you like, though I’m not sure that it makes sense. In fact, if anyone had tried to explain it to me,
I’d have said they were mad. It may mean that I’m mad to even think of it. I don’t know. But I’ll try and tell you. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“Go on,” I said.
The blue eyes that looked at me through the smoke had their usual puzzled expression. They were the eyes of a worried child, looking into a queer, half-seen world that it didn’t, quite understand.
“She knew about Biddy and me,” he said. “I think she knew what was going to happen to us even before we knew ourselves. I think she wanted it to happen. She hated me, you know. I think she tried to pretend to herself that she didn’t, but that’s the sort of thing you can’t help knowing. I thought, at first, that she was pleased when I fell in love with Biddy because it would make me unhappy. She knew that Biddy and I weren’t the sort to do anything about it, if you see what I mean. At least, if she didn’t know it at first, she realised it pretty soon. And when she knew that we wouldn’t ever do anything wrong, then she knew that she wouldn’t have a hold over us. Not in that way. Then Brigid was always talking about going back to her brute of a husband because of Sebastian … she used to say that she thought a child should have a father, however bad he was, and then, I think, she thought of getting at us through Sebastian.”
He looked at me. “Do you see, old man?”
“I think so,” I said.
He sighed. “This is where it starts to go muddled and crazy. And I still don’t know whether I was mad, and made it all up. When Sebastian was ill, at Christmas, Biddy was awfully upset. She felt guilty, I think, not that she’d neglected him, but you know how she is. It was then that I began to wonder about Venetia. Things she said, and the way she looked … everything seemed suddenly to mean much more than it ever had before. I got the idea that she was out to do Sebastian some sort of harm. I didn’t think, then, that she might try to kill him. That came later. Then I began to wonder why she wanted to hurt him. And after a bit I got an idea. At first it seemed a bloody stupid idea, and I thought I must have gone crazy even to think of it. Then, after a while, it didn’t seem so stupid after all. It began to tie up. It seemed that it wasn’t enough for Biddy and me to be unhappy because we couldn’t do anything about our being in love. While Biddy was in the house we could see each other every day. If she’d just wanted us to be ordinarily unhappy, she’d have let Biddy go back to her husband instead of persuading her to stay. But she wanted something much worse for Biddy and me …”