Most Loving Mere Folly

by Edith Pargeter

  Clearing away her materials in haste, she went back into the house. The chilly first hint of daylight was beginning; the moon swam low along the horizon, and while she had been deaf to everything outside the walls of the workshop, the sounds of earliest traffic had begun, faint and constant along the high road. The lane which passed the gate of Little Worth had scarcely a foot on it yet, but there was always the possibility of a passing bicycle heading for one of the farms. She knew exactly what she had to do now, and in what order. First, there was the note she had promised Dennis; while there was still the half of darkness to cover her, she must go down to the gate, and leave it under the stone there. Then the credible morning activities of making coffee and beginning to prepare breakfast. Then, a natural enough action, she would take a cup of coffee to her husband who had worked all night in the studio; and she would find him dead, and give the alarm.

  There was so little time left that the note could say only what was essential. It had no endearments, and little information, and above all, no names; then if it fell into the wrong hands it could be less certainly assumed that it had anything to do with Dennis. She had to think of all these things now. She ordered; it was necessary, because only she knew what had to be done and said.

  ‘Don’t come in. Go on quickly, read this later. Soon you will be questioned about what happened here last night. You came, but you were never in the studio, you did not see him. There never was a biscuit beaker. Otherwise, tell the truth. Come as usual, behave as usual. I rely on you.’

  That was all. She did not say that there had been a death in the night. If he knew it already, why waste words? And if he did not, so much the more convincing would he be when he was questioned.

  She ran up the stairs and dressed in haste, and then let herself out by the yard door and ran all down the drive, which was so dry and hard that it would take no prints from her shoes, nor leave any damp upon them. Nothing appeared in the lane as she thrust the note under the stone.

  Half-past six, and she was back in the house, and the door shut behind her. She laid the cloth in the kitchen while the coffee was coming to the boil. Her heart was thudding and her ears rang with running, but she could not rest yet. Now she had either to call the police so quickly and urgently that they might be already busy in the studio by the time Dennis passed at a quarter to eight, or else delay until he was safely gone by; and of these two courses the first seemed to her the more convincing, since she was habitually an early riser, and it might reasonably be supposed that she would waste no time in hunting out a tired husband who had worked all night. There remained, however, the frightful risk that Dennis might stop his motor-cycle at the gate just as the police came along the lane, or while they were still at the front of the house, within sight of the gate. Weighing the dangers which every way confronted them, she thought this, on reflection, perhaps the least of them. The sense of caution about their affairs had been his from the beginning, never hers; he would be as defensively careful about retrieving his note unobserved, as if her reputation had really depended upon his secrecy.

  When the coffee was made, she poured two cups, and leaving her own upon the kitchen table, crossed the corridor with the second, and let herself into the studio.

  The sickness of shock which had failed to reach her at the first confrontation struck at her this time viciously, in the sudden wave of nauseous air, and the extraordinarily pitiful insignificance of the fallen body. She did not have to simulate the sudden violent shaking of her hand as she set down the cup upon the bench, spilling coffee into the saucer as it chattered to rest. The encroaching daylight had faded the yellowish light from the electric bulb, and changed the values of the colours on Theo’s canvas. The conflicting rays fought over the body, pulling it this way and that in a shoddy huddle of clothes. He looked curiously small and shrunken by comparison with his living look. She had never thought how irrelevant, how like a discarded and disreputable old jacket, the body of a gifted and beloved person can look when the large motions of mind and spirit have withdrawn from it.

  The nearest telephone was a call-box at the cross-roads, ten minutes’ walk from the gate; but by crossing the field to the distant corner, and there climbing over the fence, and running the rest of the way, she reached the box in just over five minutes. When the police station answered her call, she hardly recognised her own voice, blown with running as it was. If the effect had been calculated, it could not have been better done.

  ‘Police? Please come out to Little Worth at once! It’s very urgent! This is Mrs. Freeland speaking – I’ve just found my husband dead in his studio!’

  3

  ‘You understand, Mrs. Freeland,’ said the doctor, ‘that I can’t give a certificate. There’s nothing in your husband’s medical history to lead one to expect a sudden death of this kind. He was a thoroughly healthy man. There’ll have to be an inquest, and probably an autopsy will be necessary to find out the real cause of death.’ He looked at her with the grave, considerate courtesy proper to the occasion, but she thought that he already knew the cause of death very well. If he did not, she could have told him; but perhaps he was not well informed about the wealth of risky material potters handle, and the volume of knowledge they possess about it.

  ‘I expected that,’ she said. ‘I could see it wasn’t a natural death.’

  ‘That being so, it passes into the hands of the coroner now. I’m very sorry! If there’s anything I can do—’

  He looked a little embarrassed over his condolences, as if it were already in order to wonder whether she should really be condoled with or congratulated. It was, she thought, a fair warning of what was to come.

  ‘Thank you, you’re very kind. I quite understand the position.’

  He went away with an almost imperceptible shrug, and left her to the sergeant. The police ambulance was in the yard by that time, and a thick-set little surgeon had bustled through the house to the studio, and after him the photographer, and an inspector, and an indeterminate young man in plain clothes, who might or might not be another policeman. The house was no longer either hers or Theo’s, it belonged to the great British public and the administrators of its judicial system. That was something she fully understood.

  ‘And now,’ said the sergeant, ‘if you feel up to it, I’d like you to tell me all you can about what’s happened, Mrs. Freeland. Just in your own words, if you please! I may need to ask you some more questions afterwards, but we shall have a foundation to work on, then, shan’t we?’

  The sergeant was a middle-aged man, who had been in Great Leddington now for some years, and knew most of the inhabitants; a quiet, thoughtful, plaintive person with a level eye and a low voice. She had often seen him, occasionally talked to him; it surprised her a little now to reflect that she did not know his name. His constable was a bright little Londoner, alert and pale, prompt at his superior’s elbow like an accomplished terrier.

  ‘My husband worked all last night,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t unusual for him to do that, if he felt in the mood, and was working on something that made it possible. He’s done it a good many times. I never interfered with him. He was also … drinking fairly heavily, and had been for some days. That wasn’t unusual, either, and it never stopped him working. I don’t think I ever knew him really incapable.

  ‘I had begun to load my kiln, late in the evening, but I was interrupted, and I didn’t quite finish getting it ready to fire.’

  ‘You were interrupted? By a visitor, or something?’

  ‘Yes, a friend of ours called. Dennis Forbes – he was often here. So I didn’t have time to finish what I was doing, and had to leave it until this morning. When Dennis went home I was tired, and I went to bed rather early.’

  ‘Perhaps you could give me times,’ suggested the sergeant, as she paused.

  ‘He came about nine, and I think it must have been just turned half-past nine when he left, but I can’t be positive to ten minutes or so. I suppose I was up for about half an hour after tha
t. I must have gone to bed very soon after ten.’

  ‘You didn’t interrupt your husband in his studio – you and your friend?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been much use, he was too drunk to care about people. No, we didn’t go in there. We stayed talking in here for a while, and then Dennis went home, and I cleared things up a little, and went to bed.’

  ‘You never heard any sound – any cry, for instance, from the studio – after you retired?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘And you weren’t alarmed that Mr. Freeland didn’t join you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have alarmed me, no. But as I fell asleep quite soon, I didn’t know whether he’d come to bed or not, until I got up this morning. We’re not sharing a room,’ she said, raising her eyes suddenly to his face.

  ‘I see! May I ask – was that arrangement of old standing, or did it indicate a … a recent change in your relationship?’

  ‘A very recent change,’ she said, gazing thoughtfully into the plaintive eyes which studied her with so much solicitude and so pointed an intelligence. ‘It’s all right! I understand that you have to enquire into that part of our lives, too.’

  She waited for him to probe farther, but he asked her, instead: ‘What about this morning? Tell me about that.’

  ‘I awoke about six – a few minutes before, I think – and remembered my kiln, and wanted to finish loading it, and fire it as early as possible. So I got up, and went out to the workshop. It wasn’t until I saw the light on in the studio window, when I went out at the back door, that I knew Theo was still up. I loaded and covered the kiln, and fired it, and then I came in and began to get the breakfast ready. We often had it in the kitchen, and didn’t light this fire until later. I made the coffee, and took it in to him. And found him – as you’ve seen him.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘About a quarter to seven, as far as I can make out. I didn’t stop to look at the clock then, I called you as quickly as I could. I must have been on the line about seven or eight minutes after I found him.’

  ‘You thought at once there was something wrong about his death? You had no doubt that he was dead?’

  ‘I touched his hand,’ she said, paling. ‘I saw his eyes. You’ve seen him yourself. What doubt could I have that he was dead? And how could it be a natural death – or at least, how could I jump to the conclusion that it was – when he was never ill? He was a very fit and a very strong man, in spite of drinking rather a lot. Of course I thought there was something wrong with it!’

  ‘You had no other reason for thinking so, apart from his appearance?’

  ‘No. Wasn’t that enough? I’d never had any reason to think of death at all in connection with Theo. He was always rather more alive than other men.’

  ‘You never thought, for instance, that he might have taken his own life?’ he suggested, almost meekly.

  ‘No, never!’ She said it almost blankly, as if the question seemed to her silly rather than shocking.

  ‘What makes you so positive about that? The most unexpected people do commit suicide.’

  ‘Theo was on the side of life,’ she said vehemently. The temptation to hesitate, to avow a doubt she did not feel, had just touched her heart with the first true convulsion of guilt towards him, and in consequence her words had a ritual ring about them, like a phrase of exorcism.

  ‘I don’t understand quite what you mean by that,’ he said humbly.

  ‘I don’t know how to make it any clearer. There are people who are on the side of life, who live with their doors wide open to experience and to relationships, who like to do, and feel, and make things, and don’t know how to be bored or in despair. There are other people who spend their whole lives warding off other people and avoiding experience, who don’t want to spend energy in feeling, or creating, or liking, or anything that isn’t as safe as the grave. I can believe they might kill themselves rather easily. But Theo was the first kind. I don’t say it couldn’t happen, but I do say it’s extremely unlikely.’

  ‘The best of us,’ he suggested, watching her steadily, ‘may have short moods against our nature. It wouldn’t take long then to do something fatal, and there’d be no taking it back afterwards.’

  ‘I’ve said it could happen. I still think it very improbable.’

  ‘But he had rather special reasons for being unusually depressed just now, if his relations with you were disturbed? You don’t think that would be enough to turn him to a course even as far out of his line as suicide?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, intensely pale. ‘I can only say what I feel. It never seemed to me even a possibility.’

  ‘But he was unhappy about the situation with you?’

  ‘Yes – yes, he was.’

  ‘May I ask if you had made any plans? Did you intend to leave him?’

  ‘I had no plans at all. I didn’t look further ahead than tomorrow. You can surely understand that. We didn’t want to hurt each other, and there wasn’t anything you could call a quarrel. There was only a reality, something that had happened, and that we had to accept and get used to. How we were going to make the adjustments was something we hadn’t solved.’

  ‘It must have been very much on your mind,’ said the sergeant sympathetically. ‘On the minds of both of you.’

  She said nothing; she had already said enough, and truth and lies between them were tearing at the cords of her mind. In a moment he went back placidly to the events of the morning. ‘You found the room just as you left it for us? The light was on? You moved nothing? Touched nothing?’

  ‘I put the cup down – it’s there still. I touched his hand. That’s all!’

  ‘I see! Well, I think that’s all for now, Mrs. Freeland. Thank you for being so frank. It helps us, you know, when people don’t treat us as their natural enemies. In a few minutes I’ll ask you to read your statement through, and sign it. Presently the inspector will want to have a word with you. He’s a very easy man – very considerate. He won’t worry you any more than he can help.’

  She was sure of it. With tender and chivalrous solicitude they would all combine to put a rope round her neck if they could, and probably only the bright, avid eyes of the young constable would betray any satisfaction when the thing was accomplished.

  She heard the studio door opened wide at last, and voices in the corridor. The ambulance men were taking Theo’s body away.

  4

  It was the inspector who took the matter further, an hour later, when the ambulance was gone, and only the plain-clothes man remained at work in the studio. The inspector was a very different person from his subordinate, a smooth, square, dark man with the manner of a business executive. He had her statement before him, and she was well aware that the swerves the sergeant had made from too personal enquiries would serve only as signposts to this man. Perhaps indeed they had been left clearly pointing the way to her private life for precisely that purpose. It did not matter. It was her intention, no less than his, that this part of the truth should come to light early and convincingly, without too much reserve on her part, but still with the fastidious reluctance which might be expected from even the most candid of women upon such a subject. Since he had to hear about Dennis from one source or another, he should hear it from her, in circumstances which would fight on their side, instead of against them.

  He asked her, looking up from the statement she had already signed: ‘Mrs. Freeland, do you know of anything which might have caused your husband to take his own life? I gather you don’t believe very much in that possibility, but you’ll understand that we have to consider everything.’

  ‘The idea seems to me so incongruous in connection with Theo,’ she said, carefully and quietly, ‘that I haven’t been able to get my mind to entertain it at all. I’m trying to see it from your point of view, but I still can’t believe in it. No, there was nothing that was likely to make him do a thing like that.’

  ‘But you do know of at least one reason he had
for being anxious and unhappy. Your statement makes that clear. His relations with you had undergone a change – a sudden change, after so many years together?’ When she was silent, he went on, not ungently, but without any warmth: ‘I know these are questions you would prefer not to have to answer. We would prefer, for that matter, not to have to ask them. But your husband is dead, and as you were very quick to perceive, his death was certainly not natural. It is absolutely necessary that we should not miss any clue to his state of mind.’

  ‘I understand that. I am not trying to suppress anything – if it could shed any light—’

  ‘You must let us be the judges of that. Had you quarrelled with your husband, for instance? Was there a complete estrangement?’

  ‘No. It was not like that at all. You could, perhaps, call it an estrangement, but there was no quarrel. It was – just something that happened, and altered the relationship between us. Neither of us could have prevented it, even if we’d seen it coming. But it was no good pretending that everything was just the same as before.’ She turned her head away from him, tormentedly. ‘I’m not trying to suppress any of the facts – but you must understand that it isn’t easy to find the right words. These are things one doesn’t have to say every day, and accuracy is part of the truth, isn’t it? I must get it right. Give me a little time to think!’

  ‘You’re afraid it may have something to do with your husband’s death, after all?’ suggested the inspector, watching her narrowly from under his broad, white and motionless eyelids.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Unhappy men shock their families daily by choosing a quick way out. Your husband was hardly likely to be any more immune from despair than the rest of mankind. You had really better tell me exactly what had come between you. There was, perhaps, some third person involved?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a very low voice, ‘yes, there was.’

  ‘A young man?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said again, in a deep and understanding sigh. He was not a native of Great Leddington for nothing; he knew already the body of the rumour, most probably he knew even the name.