‘We’ll pass a bridge over the river on our right. After that I’ll dismount at a point where you should be able to drive off the road.’
He nodded and they left without further ado. Outside they parted in silence, Edward to his car, Lucy to Boris, who showed no resentment at having had to put up with a pretty dull hour, though he was obviously dying to be off somewhere. Before she put her foot in the stirrup she said to him,
‘Now this is probably going to be nothing at all, but on the other hand you may find yourself having to do something pretty serious and grown-up, and I’ll be relying on you. Are you ready for that?’
He tossed his head in a twisty, sporty way that showed he was ready for anything.
‘Okay. Walk march.’
Behind her, she heard Edward start his engine but did not look back. Down the slight hill they went, left into the lane, up to the bridge. The light was still strong, but anyone would have known that evening was not far off. Colonel Procope’s cottage came into sight. Soon afterwards, Lucy dismounted as arranged and led Boris to a point in somebody’s field where he would not be disturbed and could not be seen from the road. Here she tied him to a fencing post by a rope long enough to let him graze wthout getting tangled, gave him some bread she had been saving and stroked his forehead and down to his nose. She told him to stay quiet and not to worry, because she would be back for him. Her heart was beating fast again, this time from fear, not of the colonel or whatever he might do but of his doing nothing, nothing out of the ordinary, of his turning out to be up to nothing worth all this fuss.
Edward’s demeanour, when she joined him in the lane, quite failed to reassure her. His air of serious concentration, his vigilant peering ahead and around, showed her again that he was doing no more than humouring her and was perhaps already rehearsing his indulgent rebuke of her overheated imagination, fondness for sensational fiction and more. So what actually happened when they got to the cottage came as a surprise as well as a shock to them both.
Before Lucy had had time to do more than wonder what Edward had in mind, someone indoors gave a loud scream. It was a different sort of sound from anything she had heard as part of any film or imagined from reading any book; it might have come from a man or a woman or even an animal, and it set up a violent tingling at the back of Lucy’s neck, hot or cold, she could not tell which. There were other noises too that might have been bodies striking against furniture. Somewhere at the back a door opened. Edward caught her arm and led her a few yards in that direction before dropping into a crouch behind an evergreen bush and pulling her down beside him. They heard a shout or two, not nearly as loud as the scream, and then a man unknown to them came out through the doorway in an irregular walk, very much like somebody trying to make his way along the deck of a ship in rough weather. He had not gone far when he collapsed on the ground near a water butt, though his arms and legs still moved.
So far, things had seemed to happen slowly, but now they greatly speeded up. Another man, one with blood on his forehead, one recognizable as Colonel Procope, came running out of the cottage and flung himself on top of the man on the ground. It was hard to follow details, but soon a voice said or called something and the first man no longer moved. The colonel got to his feet and stood for a moment, swaying slightly and panting and looking down at the other, who was dead; Lucy had never seen death before, but she found she knew it when she saw it. Then the colonel took the corpse’s wrists in a businesslike way and started to drag it face upwards towards the shed.
‘That’s Green,’ Edward muttered to Lucy and at once sprang up and ran towards the two figures. She followed. Procope turned and saw Edward and gave him a blow that sent him down into an all-fours position. Lucy went for the colonel, who hit her on the side of the jaw with his fist. She too went down, afraid she might be sick, able to see but not very well, as if through a flyscreen. By the time she was fully herself again, Colonel Procope had shut the door of his expensive car and was driving off, scattering gravel from under his tyres as he turned into the lane. Edward followed, but some distance behind, and when Lucy reached him he had already given up the chase.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘He can’t get far, but he might—’
‘You never know. Come on,’ she said, running past him.
He came up with her. ‘I’ll never catch him in my car.’
‘I’ve got another idea’ – one she thought was hopeless but was going to try.
‘It’s no good.’
‘Just run.’
Lucy soon forged ahead. She had won both the 100 yards and the 220 in her last year at school, but she had run no faster then than now, despite her riding clothes. Her speed may even have increased when she saw ahead of her that, in his haste, Colonel Procope had overshot the bridge and was now backing and trying to turn his car. At one point he must have stalled, for she heard the high rattle of the starter. Then she had run far enough, and at her best speed hurried to Boris, unhitched him and got him back to the lane in time to meet a flushed and gasping Edward.
‘Get up behind me,’ she said from the saddle. She could see the colonel’s car crossing the bridge.
‘What are you—’
‘Do as I say.’
He managed it somehow. Apparently unaffected by the double load, Boris made good time down to the river and stoutly set about carrying them across the ten-yard stream. The water, so cold it burned, reached her knees. That was the end of her remaining sandwiches. Edward’s arms were fast round her middle. She heard the approaching sound of the car. Then they were across and Edward swung himself clear and scrambled up the short slope to the edge of the road, putting his hand inside his jacket as he moved. He turned and faced the oncoming car and what happened next seemed to happen all at once. Lucy heard a loud noise between a pop and a sort of sharp crash and again, although she had never heard a revolver fired before, she recognized it. The car swerved away from her, then towards her, narrowly missing her before it ran on to the verge on the river side and stopped there as suddenly as if it had run into a brick wall.
Boris, who had endured the events of the last minute with the calm of a police horse, blew down his nostrils. Edward turned to Lucy and took her hands more tightly than before. His look just then reminded her of the Edward of years before, when he had been a noted cricketer with, she remembered hearing, an aggressive batting style. For no reason she was aware of, tears sprang to her eyes.
‘I’m not thinking of him,’ she said, not knowing whether she meant Green or Colonel Procope or the two together.
‘Neither am I,’ said Edward.
Near them, Boris contentedly stamped and snorted.
III
‘One bit of news,’ said Edward. ‘The bullet missed not only him but his car. Some shooting, what? I never could learn even how to hold one of those things.’
‘Just as well. But what happened?’
‘Well, let’s say he spun the wheel round with some idea of spoiling my aim, saw he’d swung too far, went the other way, also too far, and drove straight into a hunk of stone he probably never even saw, fast enough to cause him to bash his head in on the inside of his car. Not a man to react coolly to sudden difficulty or danger, the late colonel. As earlier actions of his had suggested.’
Lucy looked out of the pub window towards the green hedgerow, more brightly sunlit now than when she had last seen it. ‘I suppose we’ll never know what Green had on him that made him worth the colonel’s while to dispose of.’
‘In the colonel’s own far from infallible estimation. What a silly fellow, as well as a thundering nasty one. Our friends in the, er, our competitors were well advised not to trust him with anything of great importance. No, I think you and I probably wouldn’t say thank you for being told the secret of Colonel Procope. What a damn silly name. Can I tempt you to another of those?’
‘Thank you, Edward, in a moment.’ She went on in bit-by-bit style, ‘You k
now … when I telephoned you that evening, and got you to come out and meet me, I realize now it was all fantasy, really. I just wanted to have a lovely storybook adventure, with you in it. Schoolgirl stuff.’
Edward said quickly, before he could think better of doing so, ‘I wondered whether it might be something like that, but it didn’t bother me at all. I wanted to see you. That was enough.’
‘Oh. But you brought your pistol with you.’
‘So I did.’ He laughed. ‘Just company training. Motto, better safe than sorry. Well, your adventure duly turned up, didn’t it?’
‘It certainly did. That was just as well too.’
‘You wouldn’t have managed any of it but for Boris. How is the old boy?’
‘Oh, he’s fine, thank you.’ She spoke hurriedly and without warmth.
‘What’s wrong? Come on, Lucy, is there something the matter with him?’
‘No, he’s as fit as a fiddle. It’s just, I’ve decided to put him up for sale next week.’
‘What?’ Edward was genuinely amazed. ‘What on earth for?’
‘I think I’m getting a bit old to go on having a horse in that adolescent way.’
He nodded slowly. Something her father had said on that point narrowly failed to reach his consciousness. ‘Well, I suppose you know best. Are you ready for that drink now?’
‘Did anything more ever come out about that forgery?’ asked Roger Ashby.
Edward looked up from his armchair and glass of sherry. ‘Forgery?’
‘Those verses from Gray’s Elegy, wasn’t it? Which you seemed convinced were the work of some forger.’
‘Ah. My conviction proved to be well founded. At least it was confirmed by an announcement to that effect in the paper.’
‘Really. I must have missed that. Who was the forger, were we told?’
‘No. Probably someone quite obscure or even unknown. A mere amateur.’ After some hesitation, Edward went on, ‘Oddly enough, just the other day I happened to run across the fellow who brought the verses to light. Bumped into him at a social gathering. He struck me as rather uncommunicative. My impression was he realized he’d been taken for a ride.’
Ashby did not ask for a clarification of the last phrase. ‘I’d give something to know how he got a load of tosh into the paper. Friends in high places?’
‘Perhaps a kindred spirit. A colleague of mine is looking into it. Now I must leave you for a while. I have to see a man about a horse.’
‘A horse? That doesn’t sound like your kind of thing at all, Edward.’
‘Oh, not to lay a bet, I assure you. I’m buying the animal. With a view to giving it back to the vendor as a sort of present.’
‘Somebody’s birthday?’
‘I suppose you could call it an engagement present.’
A Twitch on the Thread
I
‘It must be wonderful, never to need help. I simply can’t imagine what it’s like.’
‘I have quite a job myself.’ Daniel Davidson tried to match his wife’s bantering tone. ‘You of all people surely realize I need help constantly, every other waking moment. Every other sleeping moment as well, I expect I’d find if I could be around to check.’
‘Oh, come on, you know what I mean – outside help.’
‘My kind of help comes from outside too, but yes, darling, of course I know what you mean. How are you feeling this morning?’
This was a regular breakfast-table question that usually got a short non-committal answer. Today it drew another question. ‘How do you think I’m looking?’
Daniel surveyed his wife. He saw a pretty, fresh-complexioned woman in her early thirties with thick brown hair, quick eyes and a mouth that had an upward turn. At the moment she seemed to be forcing it to droop at the corners, but without much overall effect. ‘You look fine to me,’ he said, ‘but then …’
‘But then I always do. My jolly little face, as you once lyrically called it. All bubbling over with the joy of spring. Have you never thought, Daniel, even for a moment, that I might be putting it on, really honestly never? It doesn’t matter if you have.’
‘Only to start with. Very soon not at all.’ He had no need to ask what it was that she might or might not have been putting on. ‘But you still haven’t told me how you’re feeling.’
‘Oh, absolutely terrible, thanks,’ said Ruth Davidson comfortably. ‘As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’ve given up trying to get the voice right. No point in sounding a perfect misery as well as being one. But it’s more I wasn’t cut out for being one. As if it was happening to the wrong person. I’m sorry, my love.’
‘New stuff no good, then?’
‘It’s a bit early to tell, of course. But I’ll stick my neck out and say, well, the clouds might be lifting just a bit. You know there’s nothing I’d rather tell you than something more definitely cheerful, but we’ve been through that and come back again too often.’ Ruth took their used tea-mugs across the little basement kitchen to the sink and poured water over them. With her back turned, she said to Daniel, ‘The same as there’s nothing I’d rather be than just an ordinary woman with a husband she likes a lot and also fancies. I hope you don’t need any convincing of that.’
‘None whatever, darling,’ said Daniel carefully. The care was needed to prevent the least hint of acknowledgement that he had heard very nearly all of this before, and not just in its general drift but down to its finer detail. ‘When are you seeing Eric?’ He had asked his wife that before, too, with a succession of other names at the end of it.
‘We thought today would be about right. It is two weeks since he started me on these new things, but of course I can always hang on till perhaps I know more definitely how I feel.’ Ruth checked herself before she could betray how small a hope she had of any profit in hanging on.
‘You’ve made an appointment, have you?’
‘Two o’clock. I don’t mind cancelling it if you reckon I should.’
Daniel stated firmly that he was sure it would be the right thing to keep the appointment, partly to help Ruth out of taking a sort of decision, but partly because he had taken to Dr Eric Margolis on sight and was starting to believe he might actually do something for her, so presumably the more she saw of him the better. Eric had shown himself to be different from his various predecessors by a businesslike approach that offered no parade of that quality. He claimed merely to have had a good deal of experience and some successes in the treatment of depressive illnesses like the one Ruth appeared to be suffering from. That had sounded good or possibly good to Daniel and still did.
Although it had been nearly six years before, he still remembered often enough and clearly enough the afternoon his wife had come to him in his workroom and, with profuse apologies for interrupting, had confessed that she felt wretched most of the time and often tense and nervous, all without any reason she was aware of. In his experience she seldom wept, but she had wept a good deal while she told him she had hoped never to have to burden him with this and he tried not to give any sign that he had known something like it all along. For once, for a few minutes, he had seen and heard her without – what? Without the face and voice she showed to the world, or rather with a different face and voice, not the real Ruth but another Ruth he dreaded to encounter but had never seen again. Perhaps Eric Margolis had found out how to do so and how to lay to rest that pitiful, driven creature. Meanwhile, he, Daniel, would go on as before, acting as closely and continuously as he could on his wife’s appeal not to raise the matter himself in any form.
Reflections of this sort filled the part of his morning that was not taken up with rounding off and revising his article on the ethics of punishment. At noon he gathered his papers and went to take his leave of Ruth. He knew she would tell him if she wanted his company for the Margolis trip and as usual she had evidently decided to manage on her own, so he said only that he would take his piece in to the off
ice and very likely go round to the Sussex for a sandwich with one or two of the lads.
Wearing a red tie to go with his red-and-white check shirt, Daniel smoothed back his long fair hair and left the house, a large healthy-looking man with bright blue eyes that sometimes had a distracted look, hardly believable as the comprehensive-school science-studies teacher he had been before his marriage. The house he left was part of a mid-Victorian terrace that ran dead straight for two hundred yards before reaching the larger street with its coffee shops, little Italian and Greek restaurants, newsagents and video libraries. On the corner opposite the dignified pub stood the hardly less imposing tile-fronted Underground station he was making for.
He had nearly reached it when he caught sight of a middle-aged man standing outside it studying a piece of paper that perhaps bore directions. This and the style of his belted raincoat suggested a foreign visitor of some sort, and Daniel knew he had never seen him before, so it came as a considerable surprise when the man glanced up at his approach and evidently recognized him.
‘Hello there, Leo,’ said the stranger in an American accent. His expression combined pleasure, astonishment and some less agreeable feeling. ‘You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?’
‘What? My name is Daniel Davidson. I’m sorry, you must have mistaken me for somebody else.’
‘You’re telling me you’re not Leo Marzoni? But … Talk some more. Please.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m afraid I don’t know you.’
‘But it’s Leo’s voice except for the British accent.’ By now the man in the raincoat was plainly agitated. ‘If you’re … Mr Davidson, you must have a double. Maybe a twin brother?’
‘I have no brother. And no double that I know of. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’
Complete Stories Page 44