Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow

by Patricia Harwin

  “Yes, darling, I know! I absolutely know.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, and turned away to tie Archie’s shoe. He was having a wonderful time, seeing the whole show from his perch on Peter’s shoulders and giving a running commentary in his own private language.

  We all trailed down the street, through the gate, and into the Aubreys’ house, where Cyril and his sons brought us little glasses of orange juice as we stood around in the drawing room, and Ann hurried off to the kitchen. The two sons, introduced as Eric and Graham, were tall, blond, and strikingly handsome, as well as quite modest about all the good they were doing overseas. They could make a lot of money from their looks, I thought, go into modeling or films or even sales, and instead they devoted themselves to helping children in the poorest countries on earth. Cyril and Ann were lucky to have raised such great kids, and they obviously knew it.

  This was where things would get dicey, I knew. I was miserably conscious of Quin’s presence, although I stayed on the other side of the room, making conversation with Dorothy. I knew every time he looked my way, although I wouldn’t look at him. When we went into the dining room and took seats at the long table in front of the window wall, I cast a quick glance at Janet. Her flowered cotton dress looked too loose on her, and her face seemed thinner too, so that the brown eyes looked even larger. Her former sulky look had been replaced by an edgy, almost hunted expression. She and Quin didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. He looked tense as well, but when I sat down beside Emily and finally met his eyes, he smiled, and I felt the uncertain beginning of a smile touch my lips.

  “What a beautiful day!” Cyril Aubrey said expansively, beaming around the table like a father with his brood. “One always wishes to have this weather for May Morning, but seldom is such a wish granted in this climate. I believe this is the last full day you and your lady are to spend with us, Quin, and so you will remember sunshine and flowers as your last impressions of our island. Most gratifying.”

  “One only wishes poor Geoffrey had joined us,” Ann added, taking her seat at one end.

  Eileen bustled in with platters of scrambled eggs, fat sausages, broiled tomatoes, and bacon, and Ann helped herself and started it around the table while the maid returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later she carried in a plate piled high with buttered triangles of white and brown toast, and on her third appearance, a big silver coffeepot. As we ate she came back several times with marmalade, honey, cream, sugar, and the steak sauce the English inexplicably like to pour on eggs.

  Archie as usual had no interest in sitting at the table but tottered around the room, exploring. With no breakables in reach, he soon started showing signs of boredom. Emily handed him a piece of toast, and he plopped down in a corner to tear it up.

  Ann started telling us about the boating party the whole family was going to at midday, and the sons joined in with wisecracks about another May Day when they’d gone punting and Cyril had inadvertently landed them in the river. They got us all laughing, while he tried to defend his ability with the pole in a half-serious way. And so conversation went on, full of literary allusion as usual, intelligent and amusing. But I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the two across the table. Janet took a spoonful of eggs and a triangle of white toast, but she didn’t eat them. She only sipped at her coffee, looking from Quin to me to her plate. Ann drew him into conversation, but his eyes kept darting to me while he talked to her. Emily watched us discreetly, her cheeks flushed.

  Peter was absorbed in a friendly dispute as to whether Beaumont and Fletcher had been influenced by Cervantes in writing the play we’d seen in London, when Emily suddenly half-rose, exclaiming, “Where’s Archie?” I looked around and saw scraps of toast scattered around in the corner, but no sign of the baby.

  “You stay here, love, I’ll go and find him,” I said quickly. I’d been feeling desperate to escape from the tension anyway. I jumped up and hurried into the hallway.

  There were four doors on the right side of the hall. The first one was closed. I turned the knob and opened it just a crack, peeking in and calling his name softly. It looked like a pantry, and there was no sign of Archie there, nor in the next room.

  As I got farther from the dining room I lost the sounds of talk and laughter. It was very quiet at the far end of the hall. And then when I came out of the third room, a small one with no furniture except a piano and some bookshelves, I heard a voice. The last door stood open, and I headed for it.

  Before I got there I stopped in my tracks, and a chill went down my backbone. It wasn’t Archie talking in that room. It was Edgar Stone.

  “A man named Peter Tyler is outside the door threatening me with a knife—He’ll kill me if he gets—”

  The harsh, almost whispering voice broke off, then repeated, a little lower, “He’ll kill me if he gets through—if he gets through the door.” It went slightly higher. “He’ll kill me if he gets through the door.”

  I stepped slowly toward the room. Then Cyril Aubrey spoke from within it. “No, damn it,” he said, as if to himself. “Needs more force.” And then Edgar again, with increased intensity: “He’ll kill me if he gets through the door!”

  I stepped into the room. It was an oak-paneled study, with an elaborately carved desk, an empty leather swivel chair and side chair, and a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A wheeled wooden ladder was fixed to a track on the ceiling, slanted toward the books. On the topmost rung I saw my grandson standing precariously, gazing at a small black radio-tape player a lot like the one Quin had given him, right in front of his nose on the highest bookshelf. He was waiting for it to do its magic trick again, but the tape must have run out.

  My legs began to shake. I knew in that instant what had happened. Our affable host, my son-in-law’s greatest booster, had practiced the murder victim’s voice until he got it perfect. Then he had killed him, called Peter from the murder scene to lure him there, and made the 999 call that had laid the blame on Peter. Which meant he must have killed Perdita as well—God alone knew why! I had been right about that letter after all.

  “Archie,” I said as quietly as possible, “stay there till I bring you and the tape player down.”

  He jumped, startled, and tried to turn around. I could see him starting to lose his balance.

  “Wait, wait,” I cried, running toward the ladder, “don’t move till I get you!”

  Before I could reach the ladder he fell, with a little yip of surprise. I tried instinctively to catch him, so of course he landed right on top of me. I was thrown to the floor on my back, all the breath knocked out of my body. Archie, his fall conveniently cushioned, was immediately up and jumping around me, saying something I couldn’t hear through the ringing in my ears. I lay there like a beached whale, gasping for air, wondering what I had broken and how long it would be before Cyril Aubrey walked in.

  After a while my hearing started to come back. Archie was yelling, “No, no, bad Nana!” and pulling on my arm with a worried face. All right, that arm wasn’t broken, because he wasn’t hurting me. Gingerly, I felt the other one, then my neck and my shoulders. Everything I could reach without sitting up felt okay, but I was still pulling in air as loudly as the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and every breath hurt my chest horribly.

  I gathered all my courage and started to push myself up, when I heard footsteps in the hall. Oh, God, I thought, he would know what had happened. I could see the tape player sitting askew on the shelf, not straight as it had been. I was scrabbling madly at the carpet to get to a sitting position when a man’s voice said, “Hello-ello! Having a problem?”

  I looked around and saw the Aubreys’ two tall blond sons standing in the doorway, wearing bemused smiles. Relief flooded through me.

  “Taypay,” Archie explained to them. “Fa-down.”

  “What’s that, young fellow-me-lad?” said the younger of them. “Fall down? I should say she did.”

  He came over and offered me his hand. I rose slowl
y, still gasping and speechless, but free of major pain. He got me into a nearby chair and offered to fetch a glass of water. I could only shake my head. All I wanted was to get myself and the baby out of that room before Cyril Aubrey found us. I pointed toward the door and looked up at his son pleadingly.

  He had such a nice face, concerned and sensitive. What suffering was I going to lay on him when I told the police what I now knew about his father? I wondered sadly.

  I stood up, rather wobbly, and leaning on the young man’s arm—Eric, I suddenly remembered—I limped toward the door.

  The one who remained nameless to me herded Archie along, laughing, while we made our slow way toward the dining room. By the time I could hear the talk and laughter, I had started to breathe more normally and was able to whisper, “Thank you.”

  “Not at all,” he answered cheerfully. I wanted to ask him not to tell anyone where he’d found us but knew I couldn’t get out that many words.

  The party looked up in amazement as we came in, and Emily cried, “Mother, what have you done to yourself this time?” as Archie climbed into her lap.

  “Taypay!” he kept trying to explain.

  “Playing with the baby,” I wheezed.

  “We found them on the floor in Dad’s study,” Eric added helpfully. “It looked as if she’d taken a fall, not surprising when you watch this young tearaway in operation.”

  I kept my eyes away from Cyril but I could feel his on me, as the others exclaimed and offered me advice. Emily insisted on my sitting down, and Quin took Janet’s untouched glass of water and, leaning across the table, set it in front of me while she watched in dumb misery.

  What was I to do? I couldn’t very well stand up, point down the table at Cyril, and shout, “J’accuse!” There he sat, quoting yet another obscure playwright, his wife smiling fondly at him, his sons teasing him affectionately, Dorothy nodding approvingly at a point he’d made, none of them imagining he was a murderer.

  Bookish, rumpled, kindly Cyril Aubrey—how could he be capable of such things? And why would he kill two people who had been his friends for decades?

  I was starting to feel a persistent ache in my back now, and I was slightly sick besides, more from the knowledge I was holding inside than from the fall. I pulled myself up with the help of the chair back and said, “I’m sorry, I think I really must go home and rest.”

  There was a general murmur of concern, while Peter and Emily insisted I come to their place until I felt better. I refused, but evidently I had started a trend, because everyone started getting up and gathering belongings together. Cyril and Ann of course protested politely, but we all moved gradually toward the front door, Emily and Peter still trying to convince me I wasn’t fit to drive.

  I kissed them good-bye at the gate. Archie was still worried about me. He kept repeating, “Fa-down!” and “Ow!” as we went out into the street. I looked back to see the Aubreys standing in the doorway, waving to their departing guests, holding hands. I wished I could go back and unlearn what I had learned.

  I was just opening my car door when I heard Quin’s voice at my shoulder. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he murmured huskily.

  I turned and looked up at him.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve got to talk to you too. I’ve got something really important to tell you.”

  “Have you?” His eyes lighted. “That’s good. Not right now, though. Meet me in an hour or so, after I explain—Should I come to your house?”

  I balked at the idea of letting him into my little sanctuary. Somehow I knew Rowan Cottage would never be the same once he’d stepped over the threshold.

  “No,” I said. “Someplace else. There’s a pub, the Eagle and Child, on St. Giles, just a little north of your hotel. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Right. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  He turned and went to his car. I saw Janet sitting huddled in the front seat, hugging herself. I certainly felt no pity for her, but I did feel a frisson of fear, realizing what I had just agreed to. I had to tell him about my discovery in the study, I had to get his help, but I knew this meeting was going to decide things between us as well. I was going to have to choose between Far Wychwood and New York, between solitude and companionship, and I was going to have to do it in only one hour.

  Chapter Twelve

  …what’s past is prologue, what to come

  In yours and my discharge.

  Shakespeare, The Tempest

  Parking in Oxford is a royal pain. The closest space I could find to the Bird and Baby was on Keble Road, several hundred yards away. I had to feed the meter, a big black box on a post that took the money for four or five parked cars. I put in enough coins for an hour—surely we’d be on our way to Aubrey’s house by then—pressed a button, and put the resulting ticket on the dashboard so it showed through my windshield.

  Sore all over by now, and tense as a strummed string, I walked toward the pub through the grounds of Keble College, a redbrick intruder in the golden stone of Oxford. I’d always liked the scallops and stripes and checkerboards of white and yellow brick that enliven its facades, and the happy superfluity of Victorian Gothic turrets and gables.

  It was still more than half an hour until I had to meet Quin. I didn’t want to sit conspicuously alone in the pub that long, but my body insisted on sitting somewhere, so I crossed the sunken quad to the college chapel. I’d always got a kick out of its overdecorated interior, especially the mosaics of biblical events going around the walls like a pre-Raphaelite comic strip. There was nobody else in the vast stone interior. I sank wearily into a pew, my stomach churning with apprehension. Maybe I could just sit here for a while until Quin gave up on me and went away. If I did, and if I took the phone off the hook tonight, the whole crisis would be over because he would be gone tomorrow, back to America with Janet. She’d be cheerful again in her own environment, and he’d sink back into his world of affluence and adoration and forget this temporary madness.

  How had I let it happen? Was I really so weak that a few caring words, a shared adventure, a single kiss could win me back? I hadn’t been lonely before he came, I hadn’t been afraid of the future or hungry for affection. I’d shed the skin that had loved his touch and grown a new, harder one. At least, I’d thought I had.

  A mosaic God the Father glared down at me from above the altar, a bearded old man with a stern, impassive face, a sword sort of floating on his shoulder and one hand held up, with a star in the palm. I half wished I were one of those people who believed you could get your problems solved by talking to someone you couldn’t see. When I was a child in Cincinnati, my mother took me and my brothers to church every Sunday, and I obediently repeated the magic formulas she’d taught me, picturing the man with the beard listening sympathetically, even though I never got the pony. But when she died despite my frantic repetition of every Episcopal mantra I knew, my faith began to slip away. My father wasn’t a churchgoer, so the boys and I gradually dropped it, and I’d been a skeptic ever since.

  I stared back at the mosaic face scowling down in disapproval, as if I’d somehow let God the Father down. But he was the one who’d decreed my mother should have a fatal stroke at thirty-three.

  Still, I liked churches, the quiet, the smell of candle wax and flowers, the way nobody bothers you. A church is a great place to get your thoughts together. I decided to rest there for a while, and then just go home. I didn’t have to talk to Quin, after all. I didn’t have to put myself through all this misery. It would serve him right to be stood up.

  As soon as I’d made the decision, I relaxed. No longer obsessed by the prospect of meeting him, my thoughts shot back to my other problem, Cyril Aubrey. When I gave John Bennett that tape player he would have no doubt who the killer was. But I had to get hold of it first. Could I risk breaking into that house alone? I thought I’d seen Aubrey throw me a startled look when his son said I’d been in his study. Had he remembered the tape was still there, even though he had put it on such a h
igh shelf, where no one would be expected to climb? Or had he just left it there and forgotten it? It was kind of amazing that he’d held on to something so incriminating. Anyway, I had to get back there and grab it while he was out boating. I had to do it now, as soon as possible, and, I admitted reluctantly, I was going to need help. Quin hadn’t been willing to let me go into danger alone before. He was the only person I was sure would go with me. Suddenly I was irritated with myself, hiding there like a coward, when I needed to take control of this situation.

  All right, I’d go to the Eagle and Child, not to discuss this thing that had happened between us, but to tell him what I’d found and demand his help. I would be very firm in squelching any talk about our future.

  I stood up, not without a groan, and hurried out of the chapel before I could change my mind yet again.

  “Kit—over here.”

  I heard his voice as I passed the two rooms just inside the front door of the Eagle and Child, and when I looked to the right, behind me, I saw him sitting on the bench that ran along the front wall of that room. He was leaning on a low, round table, holding his pipe. When I went in, he half-rose, then sat down again as I took the other bench, at one side of the table. He hit the pipe bowl a few times against an ash tray to empty it. The sound flashed me back to New York, to nights reading in bed, knowing the next sound after that would be the click of the living room light going off, then his footsteps coming down the hall to join me.

  The room was small and intimate, and we had it to ourselves. There was one casement window, behind Quin on the front wall, the only other light two old-fashioned wall lamps, high up, casting yellow circles on the embossed ceiling. The walls were dark green above almost black wainscoting, interrupted on the opposite side by a little fireplace.