There was no doubt about the verdict. Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed. And a rider of sympathy to the surviving relatives.
That night, as I lay in bed in my big bedroom at Carlice Abbey —a room I had grown to love for its air of unforced comfort and effortless dignity—I thought the inquest over, not only as it had actually gone that afternoon but as it might have gone, if we had told the true story. And I imagined, when it came to my turn in the witness-box, these questions being put to me, and myself being compelled to make these answers:
Q. Why didn’t you unload the gun before bringing it into the house?
A. Because Rusper accosted me when I had just loaded, and I was too flustered to think of unloading.
Q. During your struggle with Rusper by the gunroom door, Ronald Carlice came up and tried to separate you?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he approach you of his own free will?
A. No. His aunt urged him to intervene.
Q. Did you hear her speaking to him?
A. Confusedly—yes.
Q. What did you hear her say?
A. Something like this: “Ronnie, you must go and stop them. I order you to go.”
Q. When Ronald Carlice joined you, who was holding the gun?
A. Rusper was holding the barrel. I also held the barrel lower down with my left hand, and my right hand was near the trigger.
Q. Was the safety-catch on or off?
A. It was on at first. It was Rusper who pulled it off, with his left hand.
Q. Do you think he knew what he was doing?
A. No. I think he thought he was putting it on.
Q. Did Ronald Carlice know that it was off?
A. Yes. He told Rusper to push it the other way.
Q. When the gun went off, who was holding it?
A. We were all four of us holding it.
Q. All four of you? Who was the fourth?
A. Isabel Carlice. She came up and put her hand round the barrel quite near the end.
Q. Who pulled the trigger?
A. I don’t know.
Q. You don’t know? Think again. You must know.
A. I suppose my finger must have touched the trigger.
Q. Did you actually pull the trigger? Did you exert any muscular pressure against it?
A. I don’t know.
Q. How do you mean, you don’t know?
A. The moment Isabel Carlice put her hand on the barrel I was fascinated by the glitter of a large diamond ring on her finger. As the poet Dowson said,
I was always a lover of ladies’ hands.
(Sensation.)
Q. You state on oath that the moment Miss Carlice touched the barrel you don’t really know what happened?
A. I state that on oath.
* * * * *
Q. Who, in your view, was morally guilty?
A. I can’t answer that unless I know what your code of morals is.
Q. What about your code?
A. It isn’t clear. Perhaps we were all morally guilty.
Q. Though there was nothing in the nature of a conspiracy between you?
A. No, nothing at all. At least——
Q. At least what?
A. I was relying on Miss Carlice to help me out of a difficulty. No doubt I felt, half-consciously, that I ought to help her in return.
Q. Let us deal with Miss Carlice first. She stood to benefit materially by her nephew’s death?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you think she conceived the staging of this “accident”?
A. Who am I to judge her?
Q. You must try.
A. I do not think she conceived it very consciously—at least, till things developed as she may secretly have hoped they would develop.
Q. That is involved.
A. I can’t make myself clearer.
Q. That first afternoon, when she asked you to shoot that rabbit on the lawn, do you think it possible that she thought—very secretly, as you would say, and perhaps only semi-consciously—“What a pity that clumsy dipsomaniac Stephen Payne can’t shoot Ronnie by accident!”?
A. Yes, that is possible.
Q. And later, when she heard of Dr. Rusper’s impending visit, might she not have thought, “If Dr. Rusper catches Stephen with a gun, we shall have a jolly old row. Is there any way I can turn that row to my advantage?”
A. It is possible that she thought this too.
Q. And when her nephew came into the room so opportunely—is it possible, by the way, that she asked him to be at hand?—don’t you think her thoughts may have become a little clearer and more conscious?
A. Yes.
Q. And, finally, was it Miss Carlice who pushed the muzzle of the gun towards her nephew’s face?
A. I don’t know. I was fascinated by the glitter of her ring.
(Renewed sensation.)
Q. Now let us turn to you. Did you at any time wish to shoot Dr. Rusper?
A. For one mad instant, yes.
Q. Was that when you pressed the trigger?
A. I’m not sure if I did press the trigger.
Q. At all events, for one mad instant it did occur to you that you might press the trigger and shoot Dr. Rusper?
A. Yes.
Q. Miss Carlice had offered you a whisky-and-soda before Dr. Rusper arrived, and you accepted it?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that drink is apt to have an unfortunate effect on you?
A. It has sometimes, but by no means always.
Q. Did you ever have an impulse to shoot Ronald Carlice?
A. I don’t think so.
Q. You’re not quite sure?
A. I felt—after a quarrel I had had with him—that he was one of my enemies, standing, as he did, for everything I stood against, but he was not my chief enemy. My chief enemy, of course, was Rusper.
Q. Might you have felt, “If I can’t get one, I’ll get the other”?
A. I don’t know.
Q. Did you consciously wish to kill Ronald Carlice?
A. No.
Q. Was he unbalanced or of suicidal tendency?
A. No. He was over-sensitive and highly strung and filled with a monomania, but he was perfectly sane.
Q. Assuming that we can acquit you of intentional complicity in this affair, are you in any way indirectly guilty?
A. Yes. If I hadn’t allowed my weakness—as you will call it—to master me years ago, or if I had been a stronger character, I should never have been victimised by Rusper or come to Carlice Abbey in such circumstances. But then, you might also say that if my step-sister——
Q. We will leave that lady out of it, if you please. Now, take Dr. Rusper. What moral guilt can you attach to him?
A. The fact that he was a bully and a fool. The fact that he was eaten up with his own dignity which he thought I had offended. The fact that he was over-bearing, stupid, pig-headed and vain, meddlesome and incompetent——
Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne. We were not asking for invective. You may stand down.
* * * * *
It was an accident. It was an accident. The carriage wheels still sing the same words to the tune of La Donna e mobile. I have taught them to sing those words, and I won’t teach them to sing any others, for the sake of all the artistry in the world. Especially now that they’re beginning to put up little tables for luncheon. Every minute the smell of food grows stronger. The old lady at the end of the carriage puts a grey rug round her knees and asks the attendant why the heating isn’t on. “But, Madam,” he says, “it’s only mid-September.” She makes a long reply. We pass through endless fields, leaving the Great Wen further and further behind us
.
I am going to Cornwall—let me remind myself—where I intend to live. My annuity has been paid, and will continue to be paid, as long as such things are payable. Rusper is resigning from the trusteeship. “Really, my dear fellow,” he said, “there are now so many calls on my time that I am not justified in performing functions of this kind.” What a changed Rusper! When I said good-bye to Dora, she said, with a tear in her eye, “So you see, everything’s come all right in the end, Stephen.” And after a moment’s pause, she added irrelevantly and untruthfully, “You remember, I told you to be patient!” Poor Dora. Are the next ten years going to be happier for her than the last ten? I wonder how much she worried about that box. Up to a point, her guilty conscience made her guess quite rightly that the contents of the box had something to do with her. But as Isabel Carlice said to me, it is utterly fantastic to think that Claude Carlice left the box about in order to take a post-mortem revenge on Dora. He wasn’t that kind of man. If he meant anything, he meant the box to be kept by his trustees and handed by them to Ronnie—who would have tossed the contents straight into the fire. A mountain out of a molehill. But who can blame Dora for that? Don’t we all invent mountains? Am I not inventing one, travelling, a free man, to Cornwall with a big cheque in my pocket. I know exactly what’s gnawing at me. I might almost say it out loud and get it over. I’m afraid that some day I shall imagine I’m a murderer, and go about confessing publicly like a character in an old-style Russian novel. I know I’m not a murderer now, but imagination and one’s nerves can play such nasty tricks. Well, if I think I’m a murderer I must go to Rusper and ask him. He’ll very quickly disabuse me of the idea. Or I could ask Miss Carlice. She’d put me straight. People like me always have a worry when they ought to be full of joy. I remember the time I won a scholarship. Even my father seemed pleased with me, and for two or three days the congratulations poured in. For about the first time in my life I was thoroughly pleased with myself. I really had achieved something. When I heard the result of the examination, I thought, “Life is too wonderful.” Then I developed a slight pain on the right side of the abdomen, and thought I’d got appendicitis. I daren’t ask my father about it, for fear he should want to have me operated on at once, and I went about convinced I was going to die. The pain lasted till, five or six evenings later, my father said to me, “Well, my boy, you may have won a scholarship, but I’m afraid by itself that’s not sufficient to make you a career.” Then ordinary life seemed to begin again—the life of friction, competition and restraint—and the pain left me.
I’m “escaping” from ordinary life now, as this train with its musical wheels hurtles me towards Cornwall. Isabel Carlice, herself serene as the ice-maiden, said to me, as she saw me off this morning: “I’m glad you’re getting away at last to your dream-world.” She was making conversation while my luggage was being brought down to the car. I answered: “I am afraid you may think the worse of me for that—for trying to ‘escape realities.’” And she said, “No, I admire you for creating them. There’s nothing real in a realist’s view of life. In a few days you will be very happy.” Then Charles came up with my luggage, and I hadn’t the proper tip ready.
It was an accident.
Yes, my good wheels, every time you say that, we’re twenty yards nearer to Cornwall. Already there’s something different in the air. The old lady loosens the grey rug about her knees, and orders stout. The two young girls put down their magazines and yawn, then smile at something they’ve whispered together, and the man with the conical head pulls out his flask.
“Yes, waiter. I’ll take a single gin and a small tonic-water, please.”
the end
Birthday Party Page 28