The Green Flash

by Winston Graham

  Summit said: ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Well … There was conversation first.’

  ‘But you agreed?’

  ‘Reluctantly. She seemed overexcited.’

  ‘In your view, was she drunk?’

  ‘Not at all. She’d had drink. As I had. But I don’t think there was drunkenness on either side.’

  ‘May I ask what caused this sudden quarrel between you? You must have been at odds before?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Then there was nothing special about this evening?’

  ‘Oh, yes …’

  ‘Could you explain to me what it was?’

  I saw Shona had got Alice Huntington with her. That old Fairy Queen. Did she need that sort of moral support?

  ‘I didn’t like some of the guests at the party. They were people whose – habits I don’t care for. It seemed to me that my wife had invited them specially to get back at me … to show her contempt for me,’ I explained.

  ‘Ah.’ He wrote down a few words. It was like the Recording Angel doing his stuff on Judgement Day. ‘So, being insulted, you threatened to kill your wife; broke two glasses and left.’

  I met his eyes again. I came to the sour conclusion that he had come to a sour conclusion about me.

  When I didn’t speak he said: ‘I’m asking you a question, Sir David. Two of your guests have apparently testified to this effect. They may have given me the wrong impression. You are now in a position to correct it.’

  I thought, what is there to say in a court like this about a personal relationship? Was a personal relationship between me and Erica ever possible? Can a man begin to explain his own violence and, by spilling it out, be able to draw away from it, detach himself, say: ‘Look, that wasn’t really me’? Yet so far, I’d played the innocent. Was that what I’d been intending to do?

  ‘There’s nothing to correct,’ I said.

  After a pause Summit cleared his throat and said: ‘ I see.’ He sighed. ‘ Well, let us leave it at that, then. Now in the matter of the fencing bout, do you say that you often had such practice tourneys with your wife in your own home?’

  ‘Usually once a day. Sometimes twice, when she was training for the Olympics.’

  ‘Did you ever injure each other before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you choose the épée for this bout? I understand it is the heaviest of the fencing weapons.’

  ‘I didn’t choose it. She did.’

  ‘Did you usually use the épée for such practice bouts?’

  ‘Always. My wife felt the extra weight and power made foil fencing easier when she returned to it.’

  ‘Was it not extremely unwise to enter into such a bout on an evening when there was such ill feeling between you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Summit looked over his glasses towards Edmond Gale. ‘Do you wish to ask Sir David anything?’

  ‘If you please.’

  Distance from Gale, you saw that his stumpy figure and gentle voice didn’t seem to matter: he came over well; no risk of him not being noticed.

  ‘Sir David, is it true that your wife made a special point of asking you to return from Scotland in time for this party, and that you made an extra effort to do so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that when you arrived at the party to find it a party entirely of men – and of men, shall we say, to say the least, you did not like – it could not have been unexpected to her that you should show some annoyance?’

  ‘I think it was meant as a gesture. A rude gesture, if you like.’

  ‘And did you threaten to murder your wife?’

  ‘I said: ‘‘I could murder that woman.’’.’

  ‘In a loud voice?’

  ‘No. It was in an aside to the man I was sitting next to. Derek Jones.’

  ‘Could the two witnesses have heard what you said?’

  ‘Palmer probably did.’

  ‘Was your remark meant as a threat?’

  ‘Of course not.’ That was true, wasn’t it? You couldn’t lie to lose your skin.

  ‘And you threw the glasses? Dropped them?’

  ‘Dropped them. Bad temper. I just wanted my wife to get the message that it was the end between us.’

  ‘And when she followed you home? You were preparing to leave. She tried to stop you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you want to fence with her?’

  ‘It was the last thing.’

  ‘Why did you finally agree?’

  ‘Not much choice. She had her weapon out and blocked the doorway.’

  ‘Sir David, did you at any time have any intention of harming your wife?’

  Probably the hesitation was only split second. ‘No,’ I said. Pilate saith unto him: what is truth?

  Gale had gone away. The coroner was writing again. I thought, now he’s going to ask, where was Mrs Carreros in all this? Because if he does I’m going to have to say, she wasn’t there. David, the practised old liar, isn’t prepared to tell that sort of lie. Stupid git. But Summit just wasn’t thinking along those lines. Shona, it seemed, had put her evidence over with such precision and authority that in this husband and wife squabble she’d inserted herself as the witness standing in the kitchen watching the contest from beginning to end. Bitch. Bloody bitch. All women were bitches.

  ‘Very well, Sir David, you may stand down.’

  Almost before I got back to base the coroner was on his way.

  ‘This,’ he was saying, ‘has been a very tragic event, which could and should have been avoided. Two talented and distinguished people engage in a routine fencing exercise, but in a situation charged with a degree of dislike which may have made the exchanges more robust, more hostile, than they would normally have been or should ever have been. We have two witnesses who have come forward, voluntarily, to testify that this hostility had been newly fuelled at a dinner party, at which Sir David had either issued a threat against his wife or muttered a casual aside. There is a conflict of opinion on this point. We have, however, a further witness who says she witnessed the fencing practice and saw nothing unusual or remarkable in the bout until the fatal blow was struck. Both contestants had been drinking, but again this witness confirms Sir David’s own statement that they were not drunk. It was not a drunken brawl. Fencing conventions were observed. It was no different in appearance from any other practice bout – until the fatal blow was struck.’

  Summit turned over his notes as if he was cooking them on a slow fire.

  ‘Those as I see them are the facts. In arriving at a verdict I must ask myself one or two questions. It is fully admitted that Sir David stabbed his wife in the throat with his sword. Now, whenever any person does an act which without ordinary precautions is or may be dangerous to human life he is bound to employ reasonable precautions in doing it. If he does not, and if death results from his criminal misconduct in failing to take these ordinary precautions, then he is guilty of manslaughter. Did Sir David so behave?’

  Summit had problems clearing his voice. Then he said: ‘Now we have evidence that, irrespective of any good or ill will which existed between the contestants, both wore the fencing masks and protective clothing which are the standard equipment of the Amateur Fencing Association. In the thrust and counter-thrust of such a contest neither good will nor ill will should have made any difference.’ He paused and then said in a hurry as if anxious to get away: ‘The fatal blow was struck in a proper manner, and in accordance with the rules of the sport. In my view, no criminal misconduct took place. I record a verdict of Death by Misadventure.’

  Shona put out a hand as if to touch me, and then withdrew it.

  ‘I should add,’ said Mr Summit grimly, ‘a rider that fencing safety equipment should be carefully overhauled, and if necessary the protective clothing strengthened. This may be only the second fatal accident to occur in England, in a sport with an excellent safety record, but someone died from a similar accident on the Continent two years ago
, and I would like to feel that this tragedy may serve some purpose if it alerts the authorities to the dangers that can exist.’

  III

  When I left the court I was too punch-drunk to think clearly about anything; but later it occurred to me to remember that I had gone to the inquest intent on saying everything that was on my mind – to come out with it all, so far as that was possible; but then these two men stalking into the witness box and trying to frame me with their exaggerations and distortions had brought out a combative instinct that I guess is not solely the property of awkward types like me. If anything was ever counter-productive I suppose it was the evidence of Messrs Parker and Houseman.

  Chapter Thirty

  I

  It’s odd how sounds can make you listen to the silences. And it’s odd how many tell-tale sounds there are in a silent flat. Worse than Wester Craig in a thunderstorm. Because here there are no ancestors to curse you or haunt you but only the curses and ghosts you’ve created for yourself. Some men are only half made; they’ve got this underlying conviction that nature has slipped up in their manufacture, and because they’re like that their only real purpose is breaking whatever their hand touches. I was such a type. The history of my life was a history of disaster. Wherever I’d gone I’d left a trail behind me like a poisonous snail. No one who knew me was the better for knowing me; in fact everyone notably worse. Even Shona you could hardly say had benefited. The firm had certainly prospered, but she had broken with her husband and they had been estranged when he died. She was looking unwell now and rather lost. Not quite the imperious, austere, beautiful, mysterious Russian dame I’d first set my sights on at the Rowtons’ cocktail party. The change wasn’t all my doing; Father Time had chipped in with a heavy hand; but I wasn’t blameless.

  Goodbye to the Leases; we’d not had much to say to each other all along; nothing to be said. But just at the last minute Mrs Lease murmured: ‘She loved you dearly, David, you know that, I’m sure.’ Bit of a stab that, under your guard; you think you’ve got all your protective clothing on and the sword slips through the gap between the bib and the collar, right into the jugular.

  Later a stout elderly chap turned up who said he was Lady Abden’s lawyer and told me that Erica had not made a new will since her marriage, so legally it was as if she had died intestate. This meant that I was the main legatee, but – he hurried on – it was unlikely that Miss Lease, Lady Abden, had left a great amount of money of her own, living as she had almost entirely on the very large monthly allowance made her by her father, and living, by all accounts, up to the full limits of that allowance. There would be some money, of course, and the jewellery and personal effects.

  ‘I want none of it,’ I said harshly. ‘Make what arrangements you can, and if you’ll see what she wanted done with her money in her will –’

  ‘The one she made when she was twenty-one –’

  ‘Whenever. See that it’s disposed of in that way. If you need me to sign things, let me know as soon as you can.’

  ‘Very well, Sir David.’ He looked a bit surprised. Had he thought I’d bumped my wife off for the sake of the cash?

  I thought off and on about Alison up in her north-west fastnesses but made no attempt to get in contact with her. What was there to say? I asked the exchange to disconnect the number of the Knightsbridge flat. The flotation of Shona Ltd could go ahead without the benefit of my invaluable advice. Most of the time I didn’t answer the doorbell, knowing it would only be some weasel-faced reporter, pretending to sympathize but trying to cash in on the fact that I might still have a retrospective and scurrilous news value. I’d pushed several out already.

  But inevitably Shona came and inevitably she got me to let her in.

  Not a woman given to hesitation in the ordinary way, but hesitant now.

  She said: ‘Well, David, it is over.’

  ‘Over?’

  ‘Yes. In so far as it can be.’

  ‘You did your bit, didn’t you,’ I said harshly.

  ‘I lied so that the truth would be more evident.’

  ‘What particular truth is that?’

  ‘That is was accidental, that it was death from misadventure, that you had no intention whatsoever of injuring her.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Because I know you too well.’

  ‘That’s the oldest cry in the world, isn’t it? ‘‘ I know him, so I know he didn’t do it.’’ Ask Hitler’s mother.’

  She came into the room and untied her scarf, drooped it on a chair. ‘Are you telling me that you intended to kill her?’

  ‘No … Well, I don’t know … there was a moment of sheer bloody rage when I wouldn’t give way.’

  ‘You have moments of anger – not rage, anger. I have seen them before. How many have you had in your whole life – half a dozen?’

  ‘Many more than that.’

  ‘So it could be said, if you wished to argue that way, that two have proved fatal. One when you were a terrified child, one when protective clothing proved faulty. In both cases you were being goaded, had your back to a wall. It is something to be lived with – outgrown.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘Because there is so much in you that is too good to lose.’

  ‘Don’t make me cry.’

  She shrugged. ‘Why should you not believe it? Because you have got into this mental habit of self-criticism, of self-blame.’

  I laughed harshly again. ‘Self-blame? Brother, that’ll be the day!’

  ‘Well, is it not so? Of course it is! You grew up with frozen emotions. In these last years they have become partly thawed out. Circulation is very painful when it returns, even to frozen fingers. As a child I knew it often! How much more so when it is to a whole personality!’

  I poured myself a stiff whisky and then put it down untouched. ‘Not long ago you were accusing me of not responding to Erica!’

  ‘And you did not. But you respond to me!’

  ‘As I do to Alison,’ I said. It was a bitchy remark, but I felt turned inside out, wishing I could vomit my life away.

  ‘So … May I have a drink?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She busied with bottles and stoppers and syphons.

  ‘So you will marry her?’

  I didn’t answer. My voice had gone.

  ‘The flotation is well under way now, David. We had to go ahead without your participation and advice. The final date for subscribing will be Friday week. If you never enter our House again you will be a rich man.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So there is nothing to stop you entering into your inheritance in Scotland with enough money to maintain it in reasonable style.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And marrying Alison or some other fecund young woman who can give you all the heirs you require.’

  ‘D’you suppose –’ I stopped and she waited – and waited. I knew she wasn’t going to let me get away with a half-finished sentence, so in the end I went on. ‘D’you suppose I’m tumbling over myself to perpetuate the Abden line? Drunkards, liars, cheats, killers …?’

  ‘I think you stand as fair a chance as anyone of producing a normal child. There are drunkards, liars, cheats and killers everywhere. Do not be so conceited for your family: the Abdens do not have a monopoly! I doubt if they even have a higher proportion in your family than anyone else.’

  No response to that. She stood erect in the middle of the room, left hand holding the elbow that held her glass. I prowled around the room, a prisoner wanting to get out.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ I said. ‘ What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘With me?’ She blinked. ‘Nothing. I have had these liver attacks all my life. As you know. In the old days I used to hide away until they were past; I hated people seeing me at less than my best. Now … I don’t so much care.’

  ‘There are plenty of other lovers in the world besides me.’

  ‘Oh, that I well know … But you happe
n to be the one that matters.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘A pity … Of course the firm will go on now without you – without even me, I suspect, though there is then the risk of its being taken over by infidels. For a few years yet I think it is safe.’

  I said: ‘It would have been better if you’d not picked me up out of my particular gutter and let the firm run on in the old way, as John always wanted.’

  ‘Better? Who for? I do not regret it. Why should one fret about past choices? Life is too short for looking back. Besides … what we had together was so rich while it lasted. I do not regret having loved you: it gave my life a deeper channel. You cannot say it had no effect upon you!’

  ‘It went too deep for my petrified emotional life.’

  ‘If that is a joke then let it stay as a joke … Will you promise me one thing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let this tragedy distance itself from you for a few months before you make any rash decision or wanton move. You have always hated yourself. Now you hate yourself more than ever. But it will pass – some of it will pass. I want you to promise to do nothing – irrevocable before you have given yourself time.’

  ‘Can’t promise,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Well,’ she said after a moment, ‘ keep to that if you can. Perhaps for us this is goodbye.’

  I put my hand on her steady shoulder but did not speak. She blinked and shook her head. ‘Now I must learn to live without you. Perhaps the hardest part is already past. Still it is difficult. Still I will try.’

  II

  Darkest hour before the dawn? It’s a load of old rubbish. But the next hour certainly was in competition for the proud title. Couldn’t settle, couldn’t rest. Couldn’t eat or drink.

  Oddly enough, suicide – which Shona was hinting her fears of – had never been a front runner. Perhaps the Abdens have some sort of stamina which enables them to endure the various hells they make for themselves. Perhaps it’s egoism, if you boil it down to the barest truth. Egoism is a built-in survival kit; without it you’re apt to perish and die. With it you just wish you were dead.