by Nina Bawden
I tried to smile. I said: “It seems to be a bad bout of indigestion.”
He said, as if he were really anxious about it: “You should see a doctor. These things can be troublesome.”
He took a small tin out of his breast pocket and offered it to me. They were bismuth tablets; I took two and sucked them slowly. They tasted clean and sweet, and they seemed to help the pain a little.
After a moment or two he said: “Do you mean, Mr. Harrington, that you had been expecting the police to get in touch with you and Mrs. Hunter? Why should you have thought that they would?”
His voice was politely bewildered but his eyes were very bright and not puzzled at all.
I said: “We weren’t thinking of the police. We hoped to avoid trouble with Mr. Hunter—and with my wife.”
It didn’t sound very credible, but there was no hint of disbelief on his face.
He said gently: “But Mr. Hunter already knew that you and Mrs. Hunter were lovers. And so did your wife.”
I said: “Yes.” There seemed to be no point in trying to explain or justify.
He went on: “But they were, I suppose, unaware that you were meeting each other that night? And you didn’t want them to know?”
His eyes were shining a little. It sounded a very slender story.
I said: “It was silly and wrong of us to have lied, I knew. And not very sensible. But we were very muddled—it was a difficult situation. And we hadn’t thought the lie important. It had nothing to do with my brother-in-law’s death.”
I thought that turned the tables rather neatly. He looked a little confused as if it had not occurred to him that the lie might have meant innocence as well as guilt.
He said, loudly and almost angrily: “We think that Mr. Parry had a visitor that night.”
I said: “Why should you think that?” trying to sound detached, only mildly interested.
He shrugged his shoulders and looked very eastern with his flat face and tilted eyes. He spread his long hand palm downwards on the desk in front of him.
“We’re not happy about it being an accident,” he said. “The medical evidence is ambiguous. It looked to me as if there had been a fight.” He stared at me brightly, his eyes widening. “You didn’t go to the barge, that night, you and Mrs. Hunter?”
There was a sleepy fly crawling up the biscuit-coloured wall. Its body was fat and blue, and its wings held all the colours of the prism. It climbed stickily and slowly, near to its life’s end.
“Why should we have gone?” I said.
“Mr. Parry was a mischief-maker. He was an angry man and in this case he had cause for anger. He thought he had an opportunity to make trouble. Mrs. Hunter may have thought she could prevent him doing so. And you had every cause to be antagonistic towards him, hadn’t you? I don’t mean that you would have wished him any harm—nor that it would have been anything but an accident. …”
Anger seemed to be my only weapon. I said: “This is ridiculous presumption. What are you trying to do? Make me fit in with your nice, convenient little story? I’m surprised you haven’t knocked me about to make me more amenable to suggestion. I thought this sort of thing didn’t happen in England.”
He looked unhappy, but not ashamed. He gave a small sigh. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington,” he said.
The tendons in my neck were stiff and aching. I said: “Mrs. Hunter and I did not go down to the barge. We drove around for a little while, and talked. We had a lot to talk about. Then we went to the Goat and Compasses for a drink and then we both went home. To our own homes,” I added, in case he should get any wrong ideas.
His gentle mouth drooped sadly at the corners. He said: “We have to try to find out the truth. I’m sorry if it offended you.”
He showed me to the door with a sudden display of hospitality. He was a good inch shorter than me and he looked frail. He smiled wearily, and said:
“The inquest will be on Thursday. I think that some of Mr. Parry’s personal possessions have already been handed over to his mother. The remainder will be available for her after the inquest.”
I think I apologised before I left him. He was the sort of person who compels apology.
The things David had left behind him were undistinguished and pathetically anonymous. Mrs. Parry went through them rapidly without reminiscence or apparent sentiment like someone who is used to sorting out the belongings of the dead. She had made two piles of his clothes on the floor of the sitting-room. One pile was for clothes that were to be thrown away and the other was to go to her nephew in Porthcawl. She knelt heavily between the piles, the sun dusty on her black skirt, her thick hands folding and discarding.
“Most of it is only good for the dustbin,” she said. “He used to dress so tidy when he was a boy. I can’t think what got into him—wearing rubbish like this.”
Nora said: “Mother, I don’t know how you can bear to do it.”
The socks she was mending were bundled in her lap. Her face was pale and looked thin; the sharp bones jutted beneath the flesh. Since I came in she had carefully ignored me.
Mrs. Parry said: “It’s just as well that there are some of us who’ll do the unpleasant jobs.”
She sounded contemptuous. Nora gave a small, wounded sob and flounced up from her chair, spilling socks and darning wool. She left the room, her hand to her mouth, and banged the door. I wondered if I should go after her and decided that there was probably no point in it. I collected the scattered mending and put it back in her mending-bag. Mrs. Parry began to pack the pile of good clothes into a big cardboard box.
There were papers on the table that had been brought away from the barge in an old green attaché-case. I went through them idly; there seemed to be nothing of importance. There were bills and scribbled notes on shoddy pieces of paper, newspaper clippings and a few circular letters.
There was nothing to produce any emotion. I found an envelope at the bottom of the case that contained a series of printed lessons, part of a correspondence course on conversation. “How to Converse with Polish and Wit” was the heading of the sales blurb—the pamphlet contained a badly-reproduced photograph of a group of men in dinner-jackets and women in evening-dress sitting round a candle-lit table.
I felt sudden pity for David and shame on his behalf. I was sure that he would have hated anyone to see this evidence of his pathetic vanity. I folded the envelope quickly and put it in my pocket. It was little enough that I could do for him.
I sat in the waiting-room for three-quarters of an hour. The room was small and crowded with sallow, coughing men and women who gossiped eagerly and consistently as if it were a social occasion. I had nothing to read and there was a typed notice on the acid green wall that said we were not allowed to smoke.
The surgery was old fashioned and smelt of ether and polished leather. There was very little room between the long examination couch and the doctor’s swivel-chair, so that when he stood up and moved about his surgery he did so delicately, with absurd, ballet-dancer steps, his tall body throwing an enormous, menacing shadow on the wall.
He poked and prodded at my pain and told me to put my clothes on. He sat at his desk as I did so, with his back to me, and I was ridiculously glad of the privacy, feeling as furtive as a middle-aged spinster as I pulled on my shirt and buttoned my trousers.
He said, when I was ready: “It’s nothing much, Tom. A spot of duodenal trouble. Nothing to worry about yet, but you’ll have to be careful. Watch your diet and that sort of thing.…”
He scribbled a prescription and handed it to me. “This’ll help you, but it’s the traditional bottle of medicine. Not much more. The diet is more important—and the way you look after yourself.”
He looked at me and grinned. He had nice-eyes, he was plump and muscular and reassuring.
“Try not to get angry,” he said. “It’s never worth it, and in this sort of thing it’s an aggravation. Probably a cause, too. You’re the type who gets angry easily, of course.”
I grinned back. “Perhaps I am,” I said. And because he was friendly and I had known him a long time, I very nearly told him just how difficult it was to follow his advice.
Then he said, with surprising awkwardness for someone who must have been used to other people’s unhappiness:
“I’m sorry about your brother-in-law, Tom. It’s a nasty business. A shock for your wife and her mother.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was a shock.” And then, lingering although I knew he was expecting me to go, only half-aware of my urgent necessity for reassurance, I went on:
“I don’t really understand what happened to him. They say he fell—inside the barge—and cracked his skull. He’d had a hemorrhage and he’d fractured an important artery. They found him outside, on the gangplank. Lying with his face in the river. I saw him there. Surely, if he’d been hurt so badly, he wouldn’t have been able to get up and walk?”
He looked thoughtfully out of the window.
After a while he said: “It’s a difficult business. Almost impossible to tell what might have happened—afterwards, without witnesses. If someone had been there and seen him, it would be easier to be sure of a diagnose. In that sort of injury there is quite often a lucid interval between two stages. What I mean is this. A man will fall and apparently concuss himself. He may come round and appear quite normal. But if the original damage has been worse than it seemed to be—if there is a haemorrhage or a depressed fracture causing compression of the brain—he will collapse again without any warning and that’s the end of it. Sometimes you can do something with surgery if you get it soon enough. More often than not, it’s too late.” He smiled at me kindly. “It sounds as if surgery wouldn’t have helped in your brother-in-law’s case, if that’s what has been worrying you.”
I thanked him. He looked at his watch, but not obviously. I went on because there was something I had to know.
“What did you mean when you said that it would have been easier to diagnose correctly if there had been someone there?”
There was a trace of annoyance on his plump face as if he thought he had wasted enough time on me, but it was instantly concealed by professional good manners.
“Just that the symptoms of concussion, which would be the first stage, and those of compression of the brain, which would be the final stage, are quite distinct,” he said. He smiled, as if to make amends for his irritation.
“How do the symptoms differ?” I said.
He was looking at me in an odd uneasy fashion as if he were wondering what it was all about.
He said: “If someone is concussed he is pale and breathing very lightly. He would look damp and sweaty. After this condition he may recover completely or there may be a lucid interval. The signs of compression of the brain are quite different. The face is flushed, the breathing noisy and irregular. The patient would probably be throwing his head about. There’s no mistake about it. Once this stage is reached it’s unlikely that the patient will recover, except with treatment, and impossible, or near-impossible, for him to come round sufficiently to move anywhere under his own steam.”
I said hastily, anxious now to get out of the surgery as quickly as I could: “Thank you. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.” I tried to placate him. “It’s difficult, you know, being a layman. It must be a bore for you, being asked a lot of stupid questions.”
Rogers said: “That’s all right, Tom.” His eyes were still curious. “Look after yourself, now. Don’t go worrying that nice young wife of yours. She’s got trouble enough without your landing up in hospital.”
“I’ll try not to worry her,” I said.
We smiled and shook hands and he asked me about a pupil of mine who had cracked his ribs playing rugger. I walked out of the surgery and into the busy street, remembering David’s purpling face and the noisy effort of his breathing. He had been near to his death and we had not known it.
And I had killed him.
For quite a long time I pretended to myself that this was all: the burden of my own, unintentional guilt. It was sufficiently heavy; it could not be lightened by accusing Geoffrey and there was, inevitably, a kind of relief in accepting the entire responsibility upon my own shoulders.
Then, because I now knew so much, I had to face the truth and go through with it. David could not have moved. Geoffrey had taken him from the barge and put him face downward in the river. He had wanted David out of the way and he had dealt with him competently and without compunction. I thought it was probable that he had guessed David was dying and he would not consider himself a murderer—only an opportunist. He would have been simply making sure. I remembered what Emily had said about Geoffrey and how he always over-reached himself, and knew that it was true.
Chapter Eleven
Geoffrey laughed at me. His teeth were white and strong and even. His laugh was merry.
“You’ve worked yourself into a pretty nightmare, Tom, haven’t you? Why the hell should I have killed Parry? For God’s sake get the thing straight. You got yourself into a fix and I came to get you out of it because Emily asked me to. It’s a charming touch to accuse me of murder, now. Is this the way you usually reward people who do you a service?”
I had looked for him all over town and found him in the Fleur De Lys, dining with the Vice-Chancellor. It was a smart and expensive restaurant, the walls were lined with pleated satin, the service was silently obsequious and the carpets thick. They had been laughing together over their coffee and their skins were pink and shiny in the shaded light. As soon as they had turned to me and smiled with polite displeasure, I knew that it had been a mistake to come.
Geoffrey said: “This is an unexpected pleasure, Tom. Will you join us?”
The invitation was graceful enough, but his eyes were angry.
I said: “I’d like to talk to you alone. It won’t take long.”
He stared at me with an almost insolent surprise and then he apologised to the Vice-Chancellor with irritated amusement. We went to a table at the other end of the half-empty restaurant and sat, facing each other with a candle in a silver holder on the damask cloth between us. The light from the waving flame was reflected in his eyes; the pupils were dilated and made the iris look a darker and more liquid blue. He was flushed and expansive and the charm didn’t slip for a minute.
He went on: “All right, Tom. So the medical evidence is confusing. But why twist it against me? You tell me that they can’t be sure that he could have walked out of the barge himself with such an injury. I tell you that he did—because he must have done. When I left him, he was lying in his bunk. He spoke to me. He was apparently quite well. I’m not a doctor. I wouldn’t have known that he had fractured his skull. Nor would you.”
The waiter brought us coffee and double brandies. He was old and slow and the veins stood out like tender cords on the backs of his hands.
When he had gone, Geoffrey said: “What are you going to do about it? Will you go to the police?”
I shook my head.
“What then?” I did not answer, and he leaned across the table, his face supported in his hands. His voice was low and earnest and sincere.
“Be honest with yourself, Tom,” he said. “Get the thing straight, once and for all. You’re an intelligent man. You’ve got a grudge against me, haven’t you? I’ve got everything, and you’ve got nothing. I win all along the line—or so it seems to you. That makes you hate me, doesn’t it? Oh, don’t say anything. I don’t blame you, because I understand how you feel. Parry fell because you were fighting with him and he died because he fell. Whatever your legal responsibility, that makes you morally guilty. And you know it. But you can’t face it. You’re crawling with guilt and there’s nothing you can do to wash it away. So you use me as a whipping-boy. Tom, I ask you, is it reasonable or fair?”
There was no escape from him, from his clever, persuading voice and his open, honest eyes. He was everything that I was not, clear thinking and confident, and he had me wriggling on a hook.
/> He called the waiter and asked for more brandy. He looked as if he were finding it difficult to focus properly. I had never seen him drunk before and was surprised to find that he talked like an evangelist.
He said, his eyes bloodshot and earnest: “Face up to it, Tom. And to yourself. Why do you want to think that I killed a man I had no reason to kill? You’ve no evidence that I did so. Oh, yes, I know you’ve got some complicated medical jargon into your head, but you don’t understand it very well, and you know that you don’t. You and I know why Parry died, and how. I think that if you had told the police the truth in the beginning you wouldn’t now feel this need to fasten the blame on me. You’re not the sort to take this kind of thing, lightly, Tom. It burdens you, eats into your soul. More than most of us you need to expiate your sins before you can be at any sort of peace with yourself. But this particular sin can’t be expiated—and for you this is almost unbearable. Because you feel in the wrong, you have to blame me. And because you can’t be completely sure that I killed Parry, you have to hate me too. If you had clear, unprejudiced evidence that I had done it, you wouldn’t hate me. You wouldn’t need to.”
There was nothing in his face but friendliness and slightly drunken anxiety. I felt my hatred for him like a ball of pain in the pit of my stomach. I thought: If what he says is true, then it will never be forgiven me.
I said: “You would like to set us all to rights, wouldn’t you?”
He smiled, a rueful, kindly smile.
“Forgive me for preaching,” he said; “but I like you, Tom.”
I couldn’t take it any more. I finished my brandy and stood up.
“You’d better get back to your guest, hadn’t you?” I said.
I went to the lavatory and when I came back, through the restaurant, he was talking to the Vice-Chancellor and leaning back in his chair with his thumbs tucked into his velvet waistcoat. There were two patches of bright vermilion on his cheekbones. The hair stood up spikily at the back of his head, giving him a family rakish look. The Vice-Chancellor was listening to him with a light, amused smile and he was a man who smiled rarely. Geoffrey was on top of his world.