Affairs of Death

by Nigel Fitzgerald

  “I thought you’d want to know,” said Barney with a look of surprise.

  “Want to know what?”

  “You said yourself that, like me, you found that the one person whom of all others you wanted to prove could not have been the murderer was the very one at whom every circumstance seemed to point. I knew that you meant me. I wanted to show you that your suspicion, like mine, was an illusion.”

  “It’s not an illusion, though I wouldn’t let myself think of it till now. Every circumstance still points at you, and the most damning thing is that you’ve built your defence on a cheat. You didn’t know that Stella was unable to bear a child till after the murder. You didn’t know till you got that letter that she had left for you last night.”

  His eyes showed that I was right, but he did not look defeated, merely surprised and hurt and tired.

  “So you knew what was in the letter,” he said.

  “I didn’t know that she was writing it and I know nothing of what was in it except what you’ve told me. But what I am sure of is that the evidence against you doesn’t rest there. What about the dogs?”

  “What about them?”

  “Where were they all day yesterday?”

  “I shut them up because I expected the guards to be in and out on account of the fire and Elly Scanlon’s death. One of the bitches bit a guard once and I didn’t want it to happen again.”

  “It would have been much harder to kill Stella and get away with it if she had had half a dozen dogs with her in the hay.”

  “Then I wish to God that I’d let them loose. Anything else?”

  “Where is the magnifying glass that you picked up in the hay-field after the fire?”

  Again he looked surprised; he said nothing, however, but from behind a row of minor XIX century poets in one of the bookcases produced a magnifying glass, cracked, with tarnished frame and charred handle. He put it down on the table in front of me.

  “This,” I said, “is most likely what set fire to the hay — and to Stella’s hair.” My voice broke as I thought of her as we had found her. “Why have you not given it to Duffy?”

  “I hid it because I don’t believe it had anything to do with the murder.” He still spoke gently and without rancour. “If it started the fire, I believe that to have been a coincidence — like the witchcraft at the party. I hid it, if you must know, to save someone for whom I have a great regard and who could not have had anything to do with the murder from being involved in the inquiry. That’s for your ears only; I have no intention of repeating it to Duffy.”

  “What makes you think Duffy’s going to hear of it?”

  “Aren’t you going to tell him?”

  “Barney could have had nothing to do with the murder. I know.” Frankie Marr spoke suddenly out of a disgusted silence. “I know,” he repeated.

  “And do you think that I don’t know?” I rounded upon Marr with all the fury that I had built up against both Barney and myself. “He could talk for a week without being able to prove to me that he’s innocent but I know damn’ well that he is — because I know Barney.” I looked at him across the table and he began to grin. “I’m sorry, Barney,” I said. “You know that I could never believe anything like that about you, whatever the proof — but you were bloody well trying to talk yourself into it.”

  Barney ran his hand through his hair. “My wits must be a bit addled this evening,” he said. “I only meant to explain to you something that I felt you should know. I’m not going to try again — not to-night anyhow.” His grin broadened. “I know what you mean about talking too much, though; one of the things that makes me so absolutely certain you’re in the clear is that you haven’t opened your mouth to explain anything at all.” He filled his glass up with brandy and pushed the bottle across the table.

  It was on my way up to bed an hour or so later that I began to wonder if I had not erred in saying that I knew Barney; perhaps I was confusing the boy I had known with the man that he had become; it would be rash to assume that what would have been impossible to the one would still be so to the other. There were points that I should have to consider when my mind was fitter for the exercise — when I sobered up, that is — for instance, unless I was completely befuddled, one or two of the things that Barney had said raised side issues of considerable significance.

  I went to bed — and hoped that I should wake up in the morning.

  My bed made no attempt to dance the hornpipe, as it had done on the previous night, and the ceiling remained fixed in its place; I merely felt sick and disgusted with myself and with life. When I slept my dreams were scraps of childish nightmare full of an undefined menace. I awoke to the sound of the chapel bell.

  It was Sunday, the Lord’s day; all over this western country from cottage and farm and country house, from shop and digs and hotel people were trooping to mass, while I, an adulterer without a mistress, a father without a wife, lay in bed and thought of murder. For a time I had almost been prepared to accept the cosy theory that all three deaths, including his own, might be laid at Scanlon’s door; in the clear light of morning I found it inacceptable. Granting that Scanlon was mad, one might believe that he had found sticking a hay-fork in his wife an enjoyable exercise and that he had seized on the next opportunity of renewing his strange pleasure, but the psychopath who thought that sort of thing to be fun would not kill himself in remorse; his desires would alternate between further repetition and self-preservation. His own death he would want neither to contemplate nor to face. If Scanlon had killed himself, he had not killed Stella and, if he had killed Stella, he had not killed himself: somewhere in Hazard Point, in church, at breakfast, or in bed, a murderer was still at large — and it seemed that I was the only one who was prepared to do anything about the fact. What was my motive, I wondered? A sense of justice? Or plain, old-fashioned revenge? Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day, said the bells.

  When I got downstairs I found that Barney and Frankie Marr had gone to church, as was only to be expected. I suppose they had thought that there was little use in asking me to join them. I was glad. I wanted neither their conversation nor their company; I would take my problems to the sea.

  The day was already hot. There was still no breath of wind and the threat of storm was still implicit in the brassiness of the morning sky and in the brooding heaviness of the atmosphere. No ripple disturbed the sea’s surface; it was as smooth as if it were pressed down by an invisible layer of warm ice. Before many hours had passed that same water would be heaving sullenly to break its restraint, but that time was not yet; in an open boat, somewhere far out on that mirror-like stillness was the place to think. I headed for the little cove where the Hazard boats were moored during the summer months.

  I was wearing bathing-trunks and sandals, the most suitable garb for the weather and for what I intended to do, especially since I had not recently succeeded in going near the sea without either losing my clothes or getting soaked to the skin. Being dressed for it, a swim from the rocks seemed to me to be a good idea; it might remove the last lingering traces of my hang-over. Accordingly I deviated from the direct way to go down to Barney’s swimming place where I could get a clear dive into deep water. As I ran down the steps cut in the rock, I saw that I was not to be alone; sitting with her back to me, a fair-haired girl in a bikini was staring out to sea. She was my ubiquitous cousin Juliet. Though she must have heard my footsteps, she did not move.

  “Hallo!” I said. “You should be at church.”

  “So should you.”

  “It’s not expected of me; I’m older in sin than you are.”

  “Thanks for the news.”

  I glanced back at her from the end of the diving-board; she had not stirred from her original position and seemed to be staring at nothing in particular. “Waiting for someone?” I asked.

  “You.”

  “What do you want, avuncular advice? or just company?”

  “Somebody to talk to who isn’t a bloody Myles.”<
br />
  “That doesn’t surprise me. Coming in?”

  “It’s cold.”

  I was midway between board and water when I heard her reply so that it was only a split second later that I found out that she was right; it was several degrees colder than it had been yesterday. Something must have gone wrong with the Gulf Stream’s plumbing — or perhaps this was part of the build-up of the still impending storm. I swam a brisk fifty yards out to sea and made an even brisker return, though two nights on brandy had not done any good for my wind; I clung on to the ladder and panted.

  “You’re a very good swimmer.”

  “It’s the only athletic pursuit a lazy man can be good at.” I climbed back to the rocks and shook like a wet dog.

  “Haven’t you got a towel?”

  “The sun will do the job just as well. If you weren’t here, I’d take my trunks off to dry.”

  “Oh, don’t mind me.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of you actually. I’m going out in the boat now to meditate. See you sometime.”

  She leapt to her feet and smiled for the first time that morning. “Mind if I come with you?” She looked very attractive in her bikini, with her body tinted by the sun to almost the same pale golden colour as her hair; she made me think of an angel, an angel just fallen, who was not yet quite sure whether she was on to a good thing or not.

  I bowed to the inevitable. “Of course not,” I said.

  She clattered along beside me in wooden-soled Italian sandals that reminded me of Stella’s. Too much about her reminded me of Stella, though they had not really been very much alike except for the slim symmetry of the expanse of firm flesh between the upper and nether parts of their bikinis. On the last time that I had seen Stella she had had twin seven-inch tines of steel buried in that expanse. I tried not to think of it; it made conversation difficult.

  “Which boat are we taking?” she asked.

  “The small one — and an outboard engine. This is a day for gentle movement without exertion.”

  She nodded approval. She seemed to know all about the boats. I wondered why it was that I had got the impression in the bus that this was to be her first visit to Rossderg. There was not a soul in sight, nor any sign or sound of human activity — nor of canine inquisitiveness. Were the dogs again locked up in their concentration camp on the old tennis courts?

  The little boat that I wanted was moored by the jetty. Fifty yards away the doors of the boat-house stood invitingly open; murderers might come and go, apparently, but no thieves were to be anticipated in this part of the world. All that we had to do was to affix a suitable engine to the boat and push off on to the horizontal looking-glass that was the sea.

  “Plenty of fuel,” said Juliet. “Good.”

  She held the boat steady against the steps while I got the engine aboard and screwed it into position on the stern then she pushed off with an oar-helve while I coiled the lanyard for the start. The engine sparked at the first pull and we began to move — and to broadcast to the farthest shores of the bay that we were under way. I settled myself with the tiller tucked under one arm and wished that I had had the forethought to bring cigarettes. Juliet was reclining in the bows like a back-to-front figurehead; between her feet were a schnorkel tube, frog-flippers and some other assorted impedimenta.

  “What did you bring that stuff for?” I asked. “I thought you found the water too cold.”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for you.”

  “You’re an optimist.”

  “It’s always well to be prepared.”

  I put a line out for mackerel but we were as yet too close to the shore to run into a shoal and no single hungry fish came our way. Juliet suggested as a good fishing-ground the vicinity of a reef on the seaward side of the two little islands that almost blocked the entrance to the bay; I steered that way. It was where I had in any case intended to go. It was very hot, but the part of my bathing-trunks that I sat on felt cold and soggy; if Juliet had not been with me I should have taken them off, for beyond the islands one could feel as secure from human observation as if one were in mid-Atlantic. I was not entirely sorry, however, that she was with me. She really looked lovely lying there in the bows, lying so low that anyone who from a distance had watched our departure from the cove might have thought that I was alone in the boat. So that, if the boat were to come home without her ——? There was food for consideration in that.

  I saw that she was watching me from under lowered lids. Her mood was very different from that of yesterday; then she had presented me with a false surface, whereas to-day she might be showing me her real self. She was prepared, perhaps, to try anything once.

  “So you were hoping to marry Barney,” I said.

  Her eyes opened a little wider but she made no other move. “Did he say that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know whether he meant to — but he did.”

  “It hardly seems the right time.”

  “Would it have been more suitable to tell me before his wife was murdered?”

  “Don’t be bloody.”

  “You have a nice line in oaths referential. This is a bloody business.”

  “Can’t you forget that you’re an actor for one morning?”

  “I’m sorry. I should take example from you. You were acting like hell yesterday, though; what was that in aid of?”

  “I suppose I was so happy that everything had been cleared up — I was just babbling.”

  “You babbled rather too much for your own good.”

  “Yes.” Her wide open eyes were calmly considering me. “I was afraid I had.”

  “What was the idea? Trying to make me think that Kinky Myles had killed Stella?”

  “Kinky was his mistress. She’s a nasty, vicious sex-pot who can get any man to fall for her, even though she’s as ugly as hell. She had a motive.”

  “What motive? She could never hope to be anything more than his mistress. And why try to make a case against her now? Now that Scanlon has been elected as the killer?”

  “I didn’t want you to think, even to think that Barney might have done it.”

  “Then you can be content,” I said, “I am quite convinced that Barney never even thought of killing Stella for you.”

  “I’m glad.” She smiled at me with her mouth; her eyes were still watchful.

  “I’m equally sure that you didn’t kill Stella for Barney.”

  Her whole body relaxed and she sighed a deep sigh of physical pleasure. “That’s all right then,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, to get that straightened out. Now we can forget it.”

  I wished that her body had not been so like Stella’s. I wished that she had not been wearing a bikini. I could not take my eyes off the bare midriff where the tines of the hay-fork ——

  “You killed Stella for yourself,” I said.

  She just looked at me.

  “I don’t believe you’ve ever done anything for anyone except yourself.”

  “What has anyone ever done for me?” Her voice was low and reflective, unsurprised. “What have I ever had? No one has ever given me anything that I haven’t earned. Oh I’m sorry — you gave me a pair of roller-skates when I was fourteen. I threw them into the Lee. All the people we know seemed to have everything they wanted. I never had anything I wanted. Stella could spend more in a day than I could in a year. Why am I supposed to have killed her?”

  “You should be telling me.” I longed for a cigarette; it would have made what I was doing seem less horrible. I had to remind myself that what had been done was even more horrible. “Of course in a way you did tell me yesterday. You’d never have told Duffy, because you knew that he could check your statement; and you wouldn’t have told me before the case was closed for fear that I might pass the information on to Duffy.”

  “That’s enough of a trailer,” she said. “Let’s have the big picture.”

  We were well out beyond the islands now and I could see a newly arisen Atlantic swell b
eginning to probe at the reef; there were no waves, only deep barely perceptible impulses, not breaking the surface but rushing it unbroken shoreward. For a moment I gave my attention to the sea; it was necessary to keep in the shelter of the reef but not too close to it, because in its lee was a forest of seaweed, sailor’s bootlaces that would wind themselves round the propeller shaft and snarl up the blades. In the weather that was brewing I did not want to have to row back to shelter, in fact in the weather that was brewing I would not have stayed at sea at all but that we were engaged upon a matter of life and death — or of death anyhow — which must be settled before we returned to our fellows. When we turned for home we must go with the flood and stay with it till we were safely in the shelter of the headland; it was obvious that, if the surface movement was so strongly shoreward, there must be an equally urgent off-shore undertow, so that while a boat would be swept, too fast perhaps, in approximately the right direction a submerged body — yes, a dead body for instance — would be sucked out to the heart of the ocean. It was a pleasant thought which reinforced my disinclination to row while my lovely young cousin sat in the bows with a selection of fish-spears between her feet.

  “Have you forgotten what you were going to say?” she asked.

  “I’m not likely to. I don’t know how you met Barney in the first place, probably here with the Myleses when you first came to stay with them, though it doesn’t much matter. I should think he took an interest in you initially because you were a cousin of mine then he began to fall for you — you’re much more the type that he should have married than Stella was and you’re very nice to look at, though I have an idea that you’re frigid — it goes with selfishness sometimes.”

  “What great charm you have, Standish,” she said. Just for a moment she looked really angry.