A Presumption of Death

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘It would seem so.’

  Harriet gazed at the stranger with a sudden wave of loathing. How could he talk calmly about this? Didn’t he know that without Peter the world would be at an end? Well, no, she thought, struggling to get a grip on herself, he might not even have met Peter.

  ‘This is the message,’ he said. He held out a flimsy loose-leaf sheet of paper, and Harriet took it.

  It said: ‘Donne undone. Only Harriet.’ Then:

  78 17 38 104 75

  3 91 87 106 49

  114 17 83 49 10

  20 62 27 55 49

  5 42 32 63 10

  36 62 2 1 26 68

  99 106 3 79 11

  121 94 37 106 99

  18 84 53 62 20

  69 63 114 40 58

  44 101 117 77 29

  101 112 38 64 34

  81 99 94 35 38

  32 102 110 21 49

  6 9 88 18 19

  81 7 49 61 8

  18 62 6 3 56

  19 68 7 20 21

  49 59 1 32 9

  20 69 68 20 68

  55 64 42 64 24 41 102

  119 118 32 112 50 3

  36 105 121 69 33

  62 15 108 69 121

  64 53 13 49 11

  21 51 68 7 106

  25 62 7 32 5

  72 20 11 3 31 61

  ‘But what sort of message is this? Did somebody bring it? Did they see Peter?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s a radio message sent in Morse code. And rather dangerous, because all the time they are transmitting they can be detected by the enemy. Our radio operators move about a lot, and never send twice from the same location. So these numbers have been taken down as a series of blips on a radio receiver.’

  ‘I see. What do I have to do?’ she asked.

  ‘You suggest things that might be the cipher text, and we try them till something makes sense.’

  ‘Leave it with me and I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’ve grasped how to try it? I’ll wait in your very pretty garden, if I may.’

  He appalled her. She had thought he would go back to London and she would send news by and by. However long it took. But if he was going to wait in the garden . . .

  ‘It’s that urgent?’ she said.

  ‘It might be,’ he said. ‘We need to crack it before an enemy could. Do your best, for everyone’s sake.’

  Harriet took the paper upstairs to her bedroom. She was trembling. This was no mood in which to try to climb intellectual monkey puzzles. But the room contained memories. Peter wildly riding a chair like a rocking-horse, crying out to her while she recited: ‘I am the Queen Aholibah’, and she had broken in to implore Peter not to break the chair. She had called him a madman. Could Aholibah be what he meant? She took a pencil and began to number the words as she wrote them down.

  I1 am2 the3 Queen4 Aholibah5,

  My6 lips7 kissed8 the9 dumb10 word11 of12 Ah13,

  Sighed14 on15 strange16 lips17 grown18 sick19 thereby20.

  God21 wrought22 to23 me24 my25 royal26 bed27,

  The inner work thereof was red,

  The outer work was ivory

  My mouth’s heat was the heat of flame

  With lust towards the kings that came

  With horsemen riding royally –

  She put the indecipherable page down beside it, and began to work. But there were not enough words. The first line of the message contained the number 104. There were – she counted quickly to the end – only fifty-six words in the stanza. How did it go on? In the great sequence of ghostly queens, who came next? Herodias, Aholibah, Cleopatra; could Peter know all this by heart? She herself could not remember Cleopatra, and had to go downstairs to fetch Swinburne from the shelf. Bungo was visible at the end of the garden as she glanced through the window, peacefully holding The Times, apparently at work on the crossword.

  Harriet found herself unable to hate him now, because she was inwardly alight with memory, with the horseman riding a chair, and her horseman had called for Aholibah, not Cleopatra. Well, she could hardly have figured as Cleopatra even in Peter’s inflamed nuptial vision! She returned to the bedroom and began to number the words in ‘Cleopatra’. Even in this emergency she couldn’t help noticing that it was a horribly bad stanza:

  I am the Queen of Ethiope

  Love bade my kissing eyelids ope

  That men beholding might praise love

  My hair was wonderful and curled –

  Oh, really! It simply beggared belief that Peter, who had stuffed away somewhere in his head a vast conspectus of English poetry, should choose to hang his fate on this. She was on the wrong track surely.

  So what was the right track? What about ‘Auprès de ma Blonde.’? He had sung that, rather scandalously, on their honeymoon, and Bunter had had to shush him, because there was, after all, a dead body hauled out of the cellar and requiring to have notice taken of it, and due respect paid.

  She stared again at the encoded message. Only Harriet. Only she. Nobody else would be able to crack it, and so logically it wasn’t Swinburne or anyone else in the corpus of English literature. However unlikely any obscure poem might be, Peter could not be absolutely sure that a code-breaker would not try it. There might be, there probably were, teams of code-breakers working day and night on these things, trying one text after another. That would take time, of course. Could he have been relying on her for a short cut to something that might be found by others, but would not be found quickly? But he could have said ‘Try Harriet’ or something like that.

  ‘Let’s take him literally,’ she told herself. ‘He doesn’t use words sloppily, even when nothing depends on it. So assume that the code text isn’t published; it really is something only I would know.’ What about the wonderful Donne autograph letter on sacred and profane love which she had ingeniously contrived to buy for his wedding present? That wasn’t published anywhere; but no, the other two of his four words said it wasn’t Donne. They didn’t say it wasn’t the Songs and Sonnets which he had been using, but that it wasn’t Donne. So all right, it wasn’t.

  Harriet felt as though she were blundering about in the mist. She was so frightened for Peter she simply couldn’t see straight. How much time had she already wasted on the harlot Aholibah? The shadows on the lawn were lengthening, and Bungo had retreated from the garden seat. Was Sadie or Mrs Trapp offering him tea? Should she go down and make sure he had been offered tea?

  ‘Hell!’ she told herself angrily. ‘This isn’t a social call! Keep your mind on it, Harriet.’ But the thought of tea had started another memory. Tea in a punt, a punt moored up under a willow tree, containing a lord who was then her suitor, but not her husband. She had handed him a dossier of everything she had recorded about the poison-pen menace at Shrewsbury College, and she had accidentally left in it a page containing an incomplete sonnet. When he had given the dossier back to her the octet had sprouted a sestet – rather a good one.

  Suddenly certain, Harriet went to her filing cabinet to look for the notes. Were they here? Most of the paperwork had been brought up from London lest it be incinerated by enemy action. The sitting-room at Talboys wasn’t a place for filing cabinets, even handsome ones with art deco handles bought on the Tottenham Court Road, so they were in a cupboard in the back hallway. But the dossier was there; whatever you thought of the secretary, Miss Bracey, who had left rather than be dragged into Hertfordshire, she had been a whizz at filing.

  Harriet retrieved the dossier with a growing sense of triumph. This would be it. Of course it would. She found the poem, sat down to her desk again, and began to number the words.

  Here1 then2 at3 home4, by5 no6 more7 storms8 distrest9,

  Folding10 laborious11 hands12 we13 sit14, wings15 furled16;

  Here17 in18 close19 perfume20 lies21 the22 rose-leaf23 curled24,

  Here25 the26 sun27 stands28 and29 knows30 not31 east32 nor33 west34,

  Here35 no36 tide37 runs38;we39 have40 come41, last42 and43 best44,


  From45 the46 wide47 zone48 in49 dizzying50 circles51 hurled52

  To53 that54 still55 centre56 where57 the58 spinning59 world60

  Sleeps61 on62 its63 axis64, to65 the66 heart67 of68 rest69.

  Lay70 on71 thy72 whips73, O74 Love75, that76 we77 upright78,

  Poised79 on80 the81 perilous82 point83, in84 no85 lax86 bed87

  May88 sleep89, as90 tension91 at92 the93 verberant94 core95

  Of96 music97 sleeps98; for99, if100 thou101 spare102 to103 smite104,

  Staggering105, we106 stoop107, stooping108, fall109 dumb110 and111 dead112,

  And113, dying114, so115, sleep116 our117 sweet118 sleep119 no120 more121.

  One hundred and twenty-one words. She looked, rapidly. Yes, there was no number higher than 121 in the cipher. She began to decrypt it:

  78 17 38 104 75 – uhrsl

  3 91 87 106 49 – atbwi

  114 17 83 49 10 – shpif

  She looked at the result in despair. However she shuffled these letters, however she ran them together to re-divide them into words, they didn’t make sense. This wasn’t, after all, the key? Or the coding method wasn’t what Bungo had described? Should she ask him for help? Wait – he had said, hadn’t he? you used the first or the last or the second or third letter, etc. What if the letter being used was not after all the first of the word? What about the last? She tried again.

  78 17 38 104 75 – tesee

  3 91 87 106 49 – ttdwn

  This wasn’t coming out any better. She stared angrily at the jumble. The only set of letters that looked at all like the shape of a word was that one: tesee. Of course there was no certainty that the numbers were the actual words; they had been re-arranged in groups of five throughout. She was about to move on when a thought struck her: she could think of one common five-letter word in the English language which ended in double e – three. Could she have transcribed the second and the third letters wrongly? She looked again and it jumped out at her: the last letter of word 17 was e, but the first letter was h; the last letter of word 38 was s, but the first letter was r – presto! She had the word ‘three’ using a combination of first and last letters, and she saw at once that the first letters were in the first and the last letters were in the second and last stanza.

  She began to work with furious concentration: ‘three and eight if possible’. Well, it clearly wasn’t possible for that to be a coincidence – she had cracked it. ‘If not H should read letter in top right bureau drawer. Three blind mice.’

  Whatever was that doing? Oh, of course, the Wimsey Arms, three mice courant. That was the end of the message then, and it would move on to the beginning. In fifteen minutes she had it.

  Mission accomplished. Proposal accepted. Danger now great. Will come home by plans three and eight if possible. If not H to read letter in top right bureau drawer. Three blind mice.

  She wrote it out carefully, as legibly as her energetic handwriting would permit, and carried it downstairs to find Bungo. He was sitting in the drawing-room with a tea tray on a table in front of him, and a large piece of Mrs Trapp’s cake on a little Royal Derby plate. ‘He came to the party, and ate just as heartily as if he’d been really invited, Harriet thought; but why be so hard on him? She must try not to shoot the messenger. She held the paper out to him.

  He jumped up and took it, and scanned it rapidly. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said.

  ‘Is it very bad?’ she asked him.

  ‘Well, they’re coming home separately,’ he answered. ‘Look, may I check this?’

  ‘It was a private thing,’ she said obstinately. ‘You’ll have to trust me.’ He hesitated and she said, ‘If Peter can trust me for his life, surely you can.’

  He folded the paper into his breast pocket, and said, ‘Well, I’d better rush. Plans three and eight will need initiating.’

  ‘Of course. Do you need a lift to the station at Paggleford?’

  ‘I have my driver waiting in the lane,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know if I can. If there’s anything. Thank you for tea. Oh, and – look, don’t worry too much. Old Wimbles has a habit of survival.’ And he was gone.

  Harriet went slowly upstairs again, and moved as if hypnotised to the little dressing-room which contained Peter’s bureau. A large, handsomely veneered thing with a flap-down writing surface, and numerous drawers and secret drawers. She had never opened it, nor ever looked at anything of his that he kept shut away. But with a sense of trespass she opened it now. It was not locked. Her hand moved as if of itself to the top right drawer. It contained a letter in an envelope of thick laid paper, sealed with his distinctive dark red sealing wax, pressed with the signet ring he wore on the third finger of his right hand. He was not wearing the ring now; it was there in the drawer. Harriet took the letter, and went to sit quietly in the window seat holding it. Turning it over she saw it was addressed to: Harriet, after my death, or presumed death.

  At once the urge to open it, the human curiosity, the aching need for words from him which must have been what led to this, to her having it in her hand, abruptly and totally left her. ‘I will presume no such thing,’ she said, aloud. ‘And this is not addressed to me. Because I am not who I would be after his death. I am not his widow, I am his wife.’ And with that thought came a kind of muted astonishment. She was Peter’s wife, she who had fought him off for so long, who had led him a pretty dance for all those years; what she would give now for even an hour or two of all that wasted time, in which she could have been with him, and would not! She could have settled, though it would have been on the wrong terms, and with that her mind jumped to the perilous state of the world. The country she was sitting in now, late, with the one lamp lighted in the room, and the owl hooting somewhere outside, this fortress built by nature for herself, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England could likewise settle, though it would be on the wrong terms. There wasn’t any doubt, really, about the need for the right terms, and so she should not harbour regrets.

  And with wry amusement she remembered how appalling to her in prospect had been the wealth and privilege of being Peter’s wife, how she had withstood it, stiff-necked, how she might well have run off with him and seized their happiness at once if he had been a pauper, or any sort of under-dog, and how brief in the event had been the enjoyment of wealth and comfort, how swiftly the war was levelling everyone, casting down the mighty so that not even crowns and coronets got you more than four ounces of butter a week, and a large house with space and air meant you got strangers billeted on you, and an end of peace and privacy. She should have known it would be fool’s gold, all that status and luxury, so very much not what she was born for. She couldn’t blame life for taking her down a peg. And she didn’t mind, not really. The only thing she minded about all this was being parted from Peter, and fearing for his safety. Fearing for the safety of the children . . .

  When he comes home, she thought, putting his letter unopened back in the bureau drawer, I shall never complain about any hardship. And it occurred to her then that her life had prepared her for the endurance of a fairly rough existence, for all the make do and mend going on round her, even for barely sufficient amounts to eat. It was Peter who would find the going tough. Peter who was used to the goose-feather bed . . . and then the thought corrected itself. Peter had taken with astonishing calm the disastrous first night in this very house, when the grates were cold, he had to wash under a cold pump, there had been only a scratch supper. What had that incredible man called Bungo just told her: ‘Wimbles has a habit of survival’? That would apply, presumably, in peace as well as war. She slipped Peter’s ring on to her own finger, closed the bureau, switched off the lamp in the dressing-room and went to her solitary bed.

  Eight

  If thou beest he; but O how fall’n, how changed

  From him who in the happy realms of light

  Clothed with transcendent brightness did outshine

  Myriads, though bright . . .

  John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
<
br />   Everyone was being enjoined not to travel: ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ enquired government posters. And people were being told that visiting their displaced children wasn’t necessary, or not very often. But Harriet had a message from Mr Murbles, the family solicitor, asking her to call at her earliest convenience, so she intended to ignore the posters, dreamed up by someone in the Ministry of Instruction and Morale, if not Helen then someone just like her. There were a number of small errands that she could do on the same trip: several books she needed, a little work-box that Mrs Trapp had left in the housekeeper’s room in the London house, and would be glad to have again, and she had arranged to have lunch with her old friend Eiluned Price. She was looking forward to the trip, she thought. And yet she wasn’t quite. It was one thing to have got used to the absence of her husband at Talboys. Experiencing his absence in the London house would be another thing. So she had hedged the visit to the house all about with Eiluned and Hatchard’s, in case it pained her.

  She noticed with a sort of detached interest that these days she had to manage her emotions as though they were a dog that might bite, or a turbulent child. She used to have to do that, long ago, before she married Peter. She had had a lot of practice in a troubled life. But marriage had left her unaccustomed to it, and she was relearning something. No doubt she would manage London. She loved London as only those brought up in a village can love it, taking nothing about it for granted. She was getting a very early train from Great Paggleham.

  The train was packed with men and women in uniform, or with the ubiquitous armbands – WAS, HDV, WRVS, ARW – which stood in for uniform. Kit-bags and gas-mask cases in the luggage racks loomed dangerously above people’s heads. The windows were dirty, and the modestly beautiful Hertfordshire landscape rolled past unseen. A shower of rain washed the glass enough for Harriet to see Hackney Marshes as the train approached Liverpool Street. Harriet thought she should leave taxis for those with urgent business, so she thrust her way through the crowd and got on a bus to the solicitor’s office.

  The bus too was crowded, and the windows were covered in a mesh of scrim with only a little diamond left in the middle to help you peer out and see where you were. Harriet peered. She saw the sandbagged shop-fronts, the queues at bakers’ shops, the air-raid wardens’ posts that had sprung up on every corner, the window glass crisscrossed with tape, or boarded up. The city had a sombre and businesslike air, bracing itself for the ordeal to come. Her bus swung round Piccadilly Circus, round the swathed plinth minus its Eros, and up Regent Street, past the Café Royal. A crowd of ball-gowned girls and men in evening dress were emerging on the pavement, blinking at the bright morning.