The Private Wound

by Nicholas Blake

  “Yes, Father.”

  He drew in his breath sharply. But his beautiful voice was almost apologetic as he said, “Oh, Dominic, have you no sense of sin? Can’t you realise what mortal danger you’ve put her soul in?”

  “Father, how can you realise what love between man and woman is like?”

  “Love? You call an animal coupling ‘love’?” He visibly restrained himself. “Do you intend to take her back to England and ruin her husband’s life? He’s not much else left, you know.”

  “No. I shall say good-bye to her at the end of the month.”

  “I see.” He looked up at me piercingly. “Why do you wait till then? Because it suits your convenience?”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  “And don’t you deserve it? Now listen to me, Dominic. Every time—you and Mrs. Leeson—” his mouth twisted with disgust—“you are making it more difficult for yourself—the addiction becomes heavier. You may not believe in mortal sin. But you’re doing yourself damage that may be irreparable. You know as well as I do that you and Mrs. Leeson have nothing in common. To use her only in the way of the flesh is cynical—a cynicism that leads to despair—and it leads to an unconscious contempt for all women. Once you have founded your relationship with but one woman on lust alone, you diminish the whole area of a future marriage: you may wish to be whole-hearted for the wife you choose, but your heart will be warped.” He sighed. “I know you have been grievously tempted. If your own father were alive, I’m sure he would tell you to put yourself beyond the reach of this temptation now, not to stay open to it for weeks more.”

  I felt the force of his words; yet they seemed somehow beside the point—and an over-simplification of the whole matter. I nearly told him about the baby (but was there a baby coming? would it be mine?). I stood in some awe of Father Bresnihan now.

  He smiled gently. “You’re a bit of a moral coward, Dominic. Like us all. You should tell Mrs. Leeson to her face, next time you see her, that it must stop. You must be ruthless, not only in resisting her entreaties, but in beating down your own sexual pride.”

  I began to speak, but he over-rode me. “And I must beat down my own cowardice. I’ve put off talking to Flurry Leeson. I shall go to him to-morrow night, and tell him he must keep his wife in order.”

  “But—”

  “Does he know about her relationship with you?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. He knows we’re friends, of course. He’s never even hinted anything else to me.”

  “I see.” The ascetic face was quiet in the lamplight. “Either he is condoning mortal sin, or he’s a very much stupider man than I believe him. It’s all right, Dominic; I won’t betray your confidence. I’ll just tell him plainly that his wife is a cause of scandal in my parish, and I can tolerate it no longer.” The old note of authority came back into his voice.

  “You’ll be taking a risk, Father.”

  “Flurry’s a man of violence—has been. But I do not think he’d raise his hand against a priest. What are your own feelings about him?”

  “Oh well, I like him, up to a point. But he does seem to lead a pretty futile life. I suppose I look down on him a bit. He’s friendly, hospitable—it’s just that he’s not my sort,” I said uncomfortably.

  “No more than his wife is. It’s soothed your conscience to think him a worthless fellow who doesn’t deserve an attractive wife, doesn’t respect her, doesn’t pay her any attention?”

  “I’m afraid that is true.”

  “Oh, Dominic, have you once tried to put yourself in his place?” The thrilling voice deepened in earnestness. “A soldier whose occupation is gone? A man who drinks to forget that? A human being with nothing left him but a down-at-heel demesne and a flighty wife? Have you no pity for him?”

  I found myself inexpressibly moved by Father Bresnihan’s words. Long after he left that night they were echoing in my mind.…

  The next morning was glorious summer again. I met Harriet at midday, exercising a horse in the demesne. I told her I wanted to have a talk with her.

  “Come to our place on the river. Ten o’clock. Father Bresnihan rung to tell Flurry he’ll be visiting him then. I’ll slip out.”

  She put heels to the horse before I could say another word. My next ordeal was going to be even more difficult than I’d thought.

  When I arrived that night on the spit of grass by the Lissawn, Harriet was already there. She sat up in her white night-dress, and I soon realised she was more than a bit tipsy. The river was still running fast after the rains, but the air was warm.

  “Harriet, I must talk to you.”

  “Love me first. I want you.”

  “No.”

  “Do what you’re told, my darling.” She stripped off the night-dress and stretched herself before me.

  “No, Harriet, we’ve got to stop.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s not fair on Flurry.”

  She sat up abruptly, her body glimmering in the faint light. “What on earth’s come over you, Dominic? He doesn’t mind.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Why’ve you suddenly started to fuss about Flurry? Don’t you want me any more?”

  I tried to explain, without bringing Father Bresnihan into it, why we should go on no longer. It was futile.

  “If you’ve suddenly gone pi, you must take me away and marry me. I’d go anywhere with you.”

  “We’ve had all that before, love. You know we’re not suited to live together. You’d be bored with me in a few months.”

  “You mean you’d be bored with me. Why can’t you be honest and admit you’re tired of me?”

  “It’s not that at all.” The smell of her skin came to me in a waft of the night-breeze. There was a long silence.

  “So you’re going to run away and leave me with your child. That’s a lovely brave thing to do, I must say.”

  “How do I know it’s my child?” I was stung by the contempt in her voice. “How do I know you’re going to have one at all?”

  Harriet gasped, as if I had struck her. Then she turned an angry face to me. “My God, you are a heel. Whose d’you think it is? Kevin’s? Well, he’s more of a man than you.”

  “I don’t care whose the child is. All I’m saying is that I won’t do this any more to Flurry.”

  “But you’re quite happy to let him carry the can for you, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not happy about it at all.”

  “So you’ll go and cough it all up to him? Your wife is pregnant by me, and I’ve just seen the light? What a hope!”

  I kept silent.

  “Somebody’s put you up to this,” she said suspiciously.

  “I did have a talk with Father Bresnihan last night.”

  “I knew it! That bloody priest! What the hell’s he poking his nose in for?” Her voice had turned to fury. “I could kill him—hypocritical busybody!”

  “He’s not like that at all.”

  We wrangled for almost an hour. Then Harriet said, “Oh, shut up! Come into me. Just once more. What does once more matter?”

  Kneeling up beside me, she pushed her breasts into my face and began tearing at my fly-buttons. Her body was so hot, so beautiful. Yet I felt a momentary revulsion from it which helped my resolve to stand firm. We fought a while, then I threw off her hands and ran away through the trees. I could hear her sobbing behind me, then nothing.

  But that night I could not sleep much. My mind kept churning over all we had said to each other—and all I should have said. I had done badly. I should have tried to explain more kindly my reasons why we must part.

  And then all the love which had been between us came flooding back. It had not been just animal coupling: there had been affection and tenderness too. Scenes from our past played themselves over in my mind. I had deserted Harriet when most she needed me. I was a coward. She would never come back now. One cannot finish an unfinished thing by putting a brutal full-stop to it.

&nb
sp; At dawn, some impulse drove me to dress and get up. I was empty with loss. She would never come back to me now. As if our place of assignation might give me some comfort, my steps were taking me back to that spot by the Lissawn river.

  And Harriet was awaiting me there. I ran out from the trees, my heart leaping with joy, all my resolutions forgotten. Her night-dress still lay where she had cast it off. In the light of dawn, her prone body was pearl-white, her outspread hair black as night. She must have gone to sleep when I had left her. I hurried to wake her and get her home before Flurry awoke. She must be terribly cold, lying there naked all night, the silly girl.

  I shook Harriet by the shoulder and spoke to her. The shoulder was very cold indeed. Frantically I turned her body over. The front of it was a mad pattern of gashes, which looked like small black lips, and the blood they had oozed was nearly black too in the dawn’s light.

  One recovers much quicker from the first shock than is imagined. For a minute perhaps I was paralysed, gazing down at the spoiled body, feeling nothing. Then I thought “Never touch a murdered body, leave it to the police.” Well, I had only touched the shoulder, to roll her over: there was not a speck of blood on my clothes. Why “murdered” though? Had my rejection made Harriet kill herself? Ridiculous. She’d not have brought a knife to her assignation last night, or stabbed herself all over if she had. And there was no knife anywhere near—I verified this in searching the thick grass to see if I had left any trace of my own presence.

  My first impulse had been to run for help to Lissawn House. But now I knew I could not face Flurry, dare not explain why I’d come out here at dawn. And who would believe me? They would find out she was pregnant, find out that I had been her lover. Guilty lovers—it’s a commonplace—sometimes kill the woman they have made pregnant. The police would not look further than me.

  I bent and touched Harriet’s cold cheek. Her eyes stared up at me indifferently. I turned and walked away into the trees, furtively, as if I had indeed killed her.

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  I stumbled back to the cottage, boiled myself tea and an egg, passed the time of day with Brigid when she turned up—all in a daze. And presently the wound began to hurt. I was responsible for Harriet’s death. If I had not left her last night, it would never have happened. Was it some wandering man who had found her naked by the river, raped her and killed her? Or maybe Flurry himself, overwrought by his interview with Father Bresnihan, had made this maniacal attack upon her, his suspicions turned to certainty at last by the priest’s words.

  But then a dreadful thought struck me. I had been overwrought myself last night. Perhaps my personality had split. Perhaps, unremembered by me now, my alter-ego had returned to the river and stabbed the woman who had become an encumbrance to me. I climbed to my bedroom, frantically examined all my clothes. Not a trace of blood anywhere. I stripped—my cunning other self might have gone back naked to kill her. No blood-stains on me, no signs of a struggle. But I could have plunged into the Lissawn afterwards, and washed them away.

  The idea that I might contain a maniac unmanned me altogether. I threw myself on the bed, sobbing, muttering “Harriet. Darling. Tell me I didn’t do it. I’m sorry, love. Forgive me. For deserting you.”

  Presently, over the top of the fuchsia hedge, I saw two cars speeding towards Lissawn House. It must be the police. They’ll break their springs at that rate.

  I tried to collect myself for the next ordeal. I must tell them the truth—about everything except my meeting with Harriet last night. That, I dare not do: it would put my head straight into the noose.

  The knife, though! I went downstairs and feverishly examined the cutlery in the kitchen drawer. The knives were all clean; so was a penknife I kept on my writing table. So that’s all right. But, if I’m a schizophrenic, I’d have washed the knife or thrown it into the river, and now have no recollection of doing so.

  Schizophrenic? Paranoiac? Supposing Harriet’s murder was the latest action in this extraordinary persecution campaign against me? The attempt to drown me on the strand had only just failed. My assignations with Harriet might have been spied on. And, after the last one, X could have killed her, knowing that the guilt would fall upon me. A subtle way to get rid of me.

  I was appalled at myself for thinking only of my own predicament, while Harriet was lying cold by the river. No, they found her hours ago. That’s what the police have come for.

  I was sitting at my desk when Concannon arrived with the Charlottestown sergeant. His politeness had retreated to a great distance.

  “Good morning, Mr. Eyre. May we come in? I have some questions to ask you.”

  “Please do.”

  (Don’t say more than you need. Don’t be gushing. Don’t be unnatural.)

  “Will you tell us your movements last night? From six p.m., say, to six this morning.” His voice tilted up at the end.

  “Well, I had dinner at the Colooney. Then I drove back here. After that there were no movements, except climbing up to bed.”

  The sergeant was writing busily.

  “What time did you go to bed?”

  “About ten-thirty.”

  “You had no visitors before that? You were alone here?”

  (Time to show a little curiosity.) “Yes. Why? Was someone prowling around after me? I thought all that was over.”

  The eyes in Concannon’s fair-haired, square head were almost dark-blue in the shadowy little room. Every time I looked up, they were fixed on mine.

  “Did you have an assignation with Mrs. Leeson last night?”

  “No. Not last night. (Clever.) Why? Does she say I did?” (Not so clever, perhaps.)

  “You admit she is your mistress?”

  “Yes. Was my mistress.”

  Concannon’s eyes sparked. “Why do you say ‘was’?”

  “Because I’ve broken it off with her.”

  “When did you do that, Mr. Eyre?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “She came to see you here?”

  “No. It was in the demesne. She was exercising a horse. I said I must have a talk with her: I’d come to realise our association was wrong. She rode off and left me.”

  “What made you ‘realise’ this, Mr. Eyre?”

  “Father Bresnihan did. I had a long talk with him the night before last.”

  “Did you now? I see. You met Mrs. Leeson in the demesne. You told her then you wished to break it off?”

  “No. I said I must have a serious talk with her. The breaking-off was still in my own mind only. But she may have suspected my intention. I’d told her several times that she and I were not suited for a permanent—for marriage.”

  “I see. And when do you propose to have this serious talk with her?”

  “Well, I was rather funking it. (Careful.) She’s not gone and done—anything silly?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  (Impatience legitimate here.) “Well, for goodness’ sake, Mr. Concannon! You’d hardly be asking me all these questions about her if all was well at Lissawn House.”

  He was evidently a little taken aback. (Now don’t get over-confident.) There was a pause.

  “Did Mrs. Leeson seem to you a suicidal type? Has she ever threatened—?”

  “Good lord, no. She’d be the last person to— You said, ‘Did she seem’?” My voice shook a little: this was not acting. “You’d better tell me, hadn’t you?”

  Concannon’s eyes pierced into mine. “Harriet Leeson was found dead early this morning.”

  This must be a murderer’s most difficult moment. How can any simulated reactions—shock, amazement, incredulity, horror—possibly ring true to a trained policeman? But the words “Harriet” and “dead” brought the live Harriet unbearably into my mind, put her deadness to me as if for the first time, so that my response was genuine.

  “Oh, no!”

  Concannon and the sergeant surveyed me in silence, as the wound of my grief broke open and I wept. After a whi
le I pulled myself together.

  “But she’d never kill herself. It’s incredible.”

  “She did not. She’d been stabbed a number of times, on the breasts and stomach,” said Concannon flatly. “Her body was lying by the river. A curious thing is that there was a lot of dried blood on the grass beneath her, yet she was lying on her back when Seamus found her. He says he did not turn the body over.”

  “On the grass? Not that grassy spit which runs out into the Lissawn? A hundred yards from the house?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “We—we often went there,” I said, broken with true emotion.

  “At night? You had no assignation to meet her there last night?”

  I shook my head.

  “You didn’t make one, and then decide not to keep it?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was she doing there, stripped, with a night-dress close by her?” asked Concannon in a pouncing way.

  I shrugged my shoulders. The sergeant’s ears were growing redder and redder.

  “Did she strip for anyone but you?—and her husband of course?”

  “I hope not. She did tell me that she’d had another lover here.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Kevin Leeson, she said.”

  “Glory be to God!” ejaculated the sergeant. “Asking your pardon, sir.”

  “But I never knew if she wasn’t just trying to make me jealous,” I added. “Tell me one thing. Did she suffer?”

  “The blow that killed her pierced the heart. But there were others first, by the bleeding. There’ll be an autopsy, of course.”

  (And then they’ll find she was pregnant. The biggest nail in my coffin. Or will they?)

  Concannon started the questioning again, calmly and ruthlessly, trying no doubt to trap me into contradictions, or just to fray my nerve. After another hour of it, he relaxed. “I’ve some men coming any minute. Have you any objection to them searching the cottage, Mr. Eyre?”

  “None at all. I’m getting used to searches.”

  He gave me a wintry smile. “And you’ll not be moving out of the district till our investigations are over.”