The Furnished Room

by Laura Del-Rivo

  He turned, and again saw his triple image in the mirrors. He raised his arm to break the glass with a blow from the gun. Just in time, he stopped himself, but the momentum of his athletic swing with his arm carried him forward so that he fell with his head on the dressing-table. For a while he stayed in that position, dizzy as a drunk, breathing in the dust of spilt facepowder.

  Then he straightened up. He realized that the noise might have woken the companion, and that at any moment he might be discovered. He must leave immediately. The woman had fallen across the doorway, and the door could not be opened. He half-lifted her body and dragged it across the floor. As he did so, her metal hair-curlers made a scraping noise on the linoleum.

  He opened the door and stepped out into the passage. The house was in silence. He groped his way down the stairs, his cars strained with the expectation of discovery.

  When he gained the garden, he broke into spasms of shuddering. He wrenched open the briefcase and grabbed the jewellery, which he flung far into the bushes. Then he ran out into the road, not going down towards Sealing but uphill towards the open country. He ran crouching, like a commando landing on a beach, with the arm holding the briefcase crippled against his chest. He remembered that he was still wearing the socks, and paused to drag them off and stuff them into his pocket. Then he was running again, up the steep hill, and gasping aloud: ‘Oh God... Oh God... the curlers scraped when I dragged her over the floor... Oh God... Oh God... the curlers scraped on the floor...’

  Finally, sheer exhaustion forced him to slacken pace. He walked until Upper Lane became a mud track, through a wood and out into the country. He blundered on without knowing where he was going, walking in order to shut out thought.

  A fine rain started to fall. He was oblivious of it until it changed into a downpour. Then he broke into a run again.

  His jacket was soaked and his shirt clung to his back. The rain flattened his hair and trickled in rills down his neck. His wet trousers clung to his knees, hampering his progress. Still he ran on, his throat raw with his rasping breaths. He felt as if he was outside his body, running beside himself.

  Fields gleamed whitely beside the path. He shone his torch through the rain, and saw that they were cornfields. The corn had been cut and bundled into stooks.

  He scrambled over a ditch and up a bank into the field. He lifted one of the stooks and set it down beside another, so that the two formed a tunnel. Then he lay down on his belly and inched his way into the tunnel. There was just enough room for him to lie, cramped and awkward, with the briefcase for a pillow, under the wigwam of corn.

  For a while he lay immobile, while his mallet heart and the rawness of his throat gradually eased. He could hear the secret rustle of insects in the corn, and the noise of the rain outside. The corn smelt musty, like sacks in a damp shed.

  As his physical condition improved, he could no longer keep himself from thinking. The crime, intended to dynamite the way to freedom, had instead been the ultimate unreality, the concentration of all the previous unreality into a sickening unreal nightmare. He had tried to commit an act of will, but instead events had been taken out of his control. The woman had lain on the floor, and he had not known whether he had killed her. That moment had been the ultimate unreality.

  He had had to inspect the gun to find out whether he had fired it. He had not. But that discovery solved nothing. The responsibility for her death was his, although he had not actually killed her.

  He did not even know whether, at the last moment, he had intended to kill her. He tried to think back, but his memory was blank. He remembered the events, but not his intention. Had his cry of ‘No... no...’ been a denial of intent to kill? He did not know.

  He had pointed the gun. Had that been to fire, or merely to threaten? He did not know that, either. He would never know…

  His thoughts kept returning to the sound of her curlers scraping the floor. That small incident had become the emblem of horror. It was linked in his mind with the image of the twisted wound on the face of the accident victim. He tried to erase the double image from his mind, but it persisted. He could not escape from it.

  If only he knew whether he had intended to kill her. If only he knew why he had pointed the gun, why he had protested: ‘No… no…’

  Beckett was numb with cold and cramp. With his hands tucked under his armpits and the hard briefcase pillowing his head, he lay sleepless throughout the night.

  It was daylight. He must have slept for a few hours. He crawled from the stooks and stood up. His clothes had dried stiffly and he was shuddering with cold. There was a pain in his right thigh because he had lain on it all night. He limped when he moved.

  Around him the coarse white stubble of the corn smoked in the morning sun. A lark rose on rain-darkened wings, soaring higher and higher into the sky, showering its pure notes. Beckett was the only man on a countryside cold-washed by morning.

  He limped across the field. His feet were numb and icy in shoes that had dried hard like wooden clogs. His steps bruised a dark trail across the field.

  He found a footpath, which led to a main road with a signpost indicating twenty-three miles to London. He set off along the main road, and before long a car stopped for him, and the driver enquired whether he would like a lift.

  Beckett assented, and got in.

  The driver said that he was not going as far as London, but only to Sealing. Beckett was disappointed at this news, as he wanted to avoid Sealing if possible, but there seemed no alternative.

  The driver was a prosperous-looking man, with a good breakfast in his stomach, and his jowls freshly shaven and spruce with after-shave lotion. He said that he was a commercial traveller dealing in novelty goods and ornaments, and indicated the boxes of samples on the back seat. He said that the secret of being a traveller was to like people. ‘I sincerely like people,’ he told Beckett. ‘I think of my customers as my friends. That’s the way to make them like me, and buy my goods. I stand them drinks, and remember where they spend their holidays so that I can ask whether they had a good time at so-and-so, and sincerely like them.’ He then went on to talk of Sealing, and said the Dog and Duck did a good lunch, quite reasonable.

  Beckett did not really listen, but he was grateful for the other’s flow of talk, as it absolved him from talking himself. He offered the driver a cigarette from a squashed packet.

  ‘No, thanks all the same,’ the driver said. ‘I’ve got my own.’ He indicated three unopened packets wrapped in cellophane, which were in the glove-rack.

  Beckett, with hand trembling with cold, held a cigarette that was stained yellow with damp. So far he had not spoken, but had only sat shuddering, subject to waves of nausea that had their source deep down in his physical centre of gravity.

  Locked in his nightmare, he was hardly aware of the driver. He felt only a sort of incurious wonder at the plump, confident hands controlling the wheel, and the man’s background of saloon bars and commercial hotels and shrewd-eyed laughter over light ales.

  On the edge of the town the driver turned left into a car park. ‘Well, this is as far as I go. I have some business in Hallidays, that shop over there. Must catch the buyer bright and early, before he disappears for his coffee-break.’

  Beckett got out, and stood clutching his briefcase. He said: ‘Thank you.’

  The driver suddenly realized that this was the first time Beckett had spoken. The two men stood facing each other from opposite sides of the bonnet. The driver’s face slackened with bewilderment. The parking attendant came up, his ticket-puncher at the ready, but was unnoticed by both of them. Then Beckett turned and started to walk away. The driver called after him: ‘Here ... old chap ... half a mo...’

  Beckett did not turn back. He walked away at an even pace. Inwardly, the incident had upset him. Why had the driver stared at him like that? Why had he called out? Was there something about him, Beckett, some mark of guilt that made people stare?

  The rear of the large store, Hallida
ys, formed one of the walls of the car park. A trio of girls, arriving for work, gave him cool glances, their crisp summer frocks flouncing as they went in the staff entrance.

  Beckett’s panic increased. Everybody was staring at him.

  The High Street was thronged with shoppers. He did not know which way to go. Women with shopping baskets jostled him as he stood undecided.

  He was thus hesitating when he received a sharp blow on his ankle. He turned, and saw Silent, who had struck him with one of his crutches.

  Beckett realized that this was no hallucination, but reality.

  Silent said: ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  The cripple leaned closer, and whispered with his mouth against Beckett’s ear: ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t the kiss of Judas.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Hold this...’ Silent gave him one of his crutches. Then he wound his free arm round Beckett’s neck. In this manner, they started to walk together up the street.

  Beckett said: ‘I didn’t know you lived in Sealing.’

  ‘I don’t. My sister does. I stay with her sometimes.’

  Silent’s arm was heavy. It was as if, with the crippling of the rest of his body, all his strength had gone into his arms and hands. His hands had the sensitivity of a blind man’s. Beckett had seen him, in the past, gauge minute differences in the weight and balance of objects by holding them on his palms. His arms had strength and reach, like an ape’s. Now the muscles of his upper arm were pressing into the side of Beckett’s neck. It only needed the curving of his arm and a bit more pressure to be a strangle grip. As they progressed up the street, Beckett thought of the words ‘the kiss of Judas’. At the edge of his mind was the premonition of betrayal and disaster. He already knew that Silent would betray him. He compared himself to Sinbad who was forced to carry on his shoulders the Old Man of the Sea, who was throttling him.

  He could have asked Silent to slacken his grip. But somehow it had become a point of honour not to. There was an undeclared duel between them. Silent was trying to make Beckett admit defeat and ask for mercy. Beckett was determined that Silent should waste his strength and temper, for nothing. Silent supplemented his weapons with an unpleasant, mocking laugh at intervals.

  They turned up a side road, and stopped outside a small terrace house in a row of its identicals. The front door was ajar.

  Inside was a gong, which Silent struck with his crutch. There was no response. ‘My sister has gone out. Good.’

  In the kitchen, they sat on either side of a table covered with a plastic cloth. The radio on the dresser, turned low, was playing Housewives’ Choice.

  To Beckett, accustomed to seeing Silent in the Soho café world, the setting seemed strange. Silent also appeared embarrassed by the neat domesticity.

  Beckett said: ‘I want a drink. Is there any?’

  ‘Bottom of the larder. Brandy. She keeps it for medicinal purposes.’

  Beckett poured brandy into two daffodil-patterned glasses. When he drank, he knew that he had been cold and exhausted and was now better. The brandy went down and formed a centre of heat inside him. It was warm in the kitchen. Condensation had formed on the window behind the check curtains.

  Silent enquired: ‘Got your portable chess?’

  ‘I don’t want to play now.’

  ‘Lend it to me for a moment.’

  Beckett took the cardboard box from his pocket.

  Silent removed the elastic band that secured the battered lid and set out the pieces. One of the white bishops was missing; the broken one.

  Beckett poked in his pockets but could not find the missing piece. ‘Never mind; use a match.’

  ‘When did you lose that piece?’

  ‘I have no idea. Use a match.’ Then something in Silent’s voice made Beckett look up sharply. He met the gaze of the unmatching eyes and suddenly realized that he was dealing with an extremely clever man.

  Silent said: ‘You are a fool. You drop things.’ His voice had become curt, rapping out words; the voice of authority. Then he raised his glass and said: ‘Your health.’ The box had been broken for a long time. The loose piece could have fallen out anywhere. Beckett tried to reconstruct his movements of last night. Had there been any time when the piece could have dropped out of his pocket?

  ‘Nothing personal,’ Silent said. ‘I don’t care for anyone; they can all go and stuff themselves as far as I’m concerned. Most people are stupid, and humanity would be no worse off without them. But the ones who do care, the ones who like or dislike their fellow men, seem to think that you’re a decent enough bloke. So it’s nothing personal. I buy goods and sell information; I am a businessman. The people concerned don’t interest me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Precisely this. First of all, I saw you in the High Street last night. I spun the memory machine and what emerged was this: Dick Dyce has got an elderly relative living in Sealing. Joe Beckett is in Sealing. Conclusion, Joe is probably here in connection with Dick. Right?’

  Beckett said nothing.

  ‘Now, when somebody wants to find out something, they ask me. Because I am a very informed man. So I wasn’t particularly surprised when two gentlemen called here early this morning, and asked if I knew anything of a person named Mrs Kathleen Dyce Grantley.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘They hadn’t come to read the gas meter. It appears that Mrs Grantley had been found in a condition that most people try to avoid. I mean dead.’

  Beckett, determined to avoid committing himself, got up and looked out of the window. There was a row of back gardens, and a woman was hanging up washing in one of them.

  Silent continued: ‘The man who did it must have been an amateur, because he threw away the jewellery he had stolen. Threw it into the bushes. Also he dropped something in the bedroom, beside the dressing-table. A small object of white plastic imitation ivory.’

  ‘Did the police know what it was?’

  ‘No. But they showed it to me. And I knew.’ Silent tapped his forehead. ‘There’s a computer in here, you know. I keep facts in my brain.’

  Beckett exclaimed angrily: ‘Why did you bring me here?’

  ‘Because I’m a cripple, of course, and needed somebody to help me home. Your support served as well as anybody’s. Besides, it might not have occurred to you, but the police are looking for you. So why not stop here, instead of wandering in the streets?”

  ‘No. I’m going.’

  ‘You can’t leave by the station.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, of course, the police will try to intercept you there. What a hopeless amateur you are!’ Then Silent began to gasp, and flopped back in his chair. ‘Oh, I’m exhausted. I’ve been subjecting myself to too much exertion. First there was the excitement of the police calling, and the identification of the chess-piece. And after that, patrolling Sealing in search of you. That walk back from the High Street has finished me. You must help me upstairs to bed.’

  ‘All right. Put your arm round my shoulder again. Beckett helped Silent up the stairs. This time, the cripple’s weight was the heaviness of exhaustion rather than active pressure.

  ‘My sister... bloody inconsiderate bitch... why does she give me a room upstairs instead of downstairs?...’

  Beckett panted with the physical effort. He managed to get Silent to the top of the flight. In the bedroom, he helped the cripple on to the bed.

  Silent collapsed. He looked as useless as a wreck on the shore.

  Beckett commented: ‘You’re clever, aren’t you? You keep in with the Mick’s Café set of pilferers on small deals. And work for the police on big ones.’

  'That’s business.’ Then Silent added: ‘I’m not a pretty sight. I can’t get a woman. Even a noisy little nobody, a jumped-up little chit like Ilsa Barnes, can laugh at me. But when it comes to brains, then I have the laugh on them.’

  Beckett realized that Silent, who despised and insulted
everybody in Mick’s, loved Ilsa.

  ‘You sleep with her, don’t you? You’re her lover.’

  Beckett did not reply. He collected his briefcase from the kitchen and left the house.

  Chapter 16

  In the telephone kiosk, he asked for the weekend number that Dyce had given him. There was a delay while one exchange contacted the other. He heard a snatch of popular song on the line, then silence. He clutched the briefcase, willing the operator to hurry. A woman’s voice answered the phone. He asked for Captain Dyce. There was another delay while Dyce was called.

  Finally Dyce’s voice said: ‘Hello? Yes?’

  They had prearranged a code whereby Beckett could communicate his success or failure. Now he found that he could not remember the code-words. His mind was blank.

  Dyce repeated: ‘Hello?’

  ‘I had to phone you. I’ve bungled it.’

  There was silence. Beckett thought: Why doesn’t he say something? He said: ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. What’s happened?’

  ‘I went through with it all right. But I’ve been found out. They’re after me.’

  ‘Christ, no!’

  He could hear his own breathing and Dyce’s. Looking through the glass wall of the kiosk, he noticed that the market clock-tower was ornamented with Gothic spires and that the time was five-to-ten.

  ‘No, Christ almighty! How on earth could you have gone wrong? What happened? Have you done for both of us?’

  ‘Not for you.’

  Sharply: ‘What?’

  Beckett stopped looking at the clock-tower. He said: ‘You’re not necessarily done for. You can keep out of the whole thing. I was broke. I knew your aunt had money and jewellery on her premises. I decided to burgle her house, so I stole your service revolvers without your knowledge. Etc.’

  ‘Are you on the level?’

  ‘There’s no point in two people getting done for one crime.’

  ‘No,’ Dyce said quickly. ‘Of course not.’