Act of Darkness

by Francis King

  ‘I want to ask you … Would you have an objection to my going home?’

  ‘Home?’ He spoke as if he had never conceived of her having any home other than this house above the lake.

  She said the name of the city in which she had been born and had lived all her life except for the last few months. ‘ There seems nothing to keep me here now. I’m sure the Thompsons no longer need me. What’s there for me to do?’ Fastidiously he recoiled both from that sing-song chichi accent and from the sour breath, the result of lack of food and of sleep, which wafted under his nostrils as her distraught face approached close to his.

  ‘Yes, of course, you may go.’ At that she looked as if, in a miraculous instant, an intolerable pain within her had abated. Then: ‘But I’d be grateful if you’d stay for another, well, two or three days. Until everything is tied up,’ he added with a smile.

  She glanced around her desperately, as though hoping that someone, anyone would appear to intervene. Then she asked, gripping her hands, the crimson varnish chipped from the nails, tightly before her: ‘ Is there anything you want to ask me which you haven’t asked already?’

  He hesitated. ‘Well, yes, there are one or two things.’ He pointed to a wooden seat by the tennis court. ‘Let’s sit down over there.’

  Clare drew a handkerchief out of her pocket, spread it on one end of the seat, and then carefully placed herself upon it, crossing one leg high over the other. Singh was both surprised and touched by this care for her pale pink shantung suit on an occasion such as this.

  ‘I’ve asked you about the pill you took that night. The blanket. The brassière.’ It was as though all the details were already obscure in his mind and he was making an effort to recall them.

  She nodded, the tip of her tongue passing over her top lip. Then she gave a little belch, put a hand over her chest and murmured, ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he went on, stooping to pick off a burr which had stuck to his trouser leg. ‘You’ve an army friend, haven’t you?’

  The already sallow face paled, the nostrils distended slightly. ‘An army friend? Yes, yes. There’s a boy I sometimes see. It’s nothing serious.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘Not for, oh, almost a week. Not since last Friday. He took me to a dance.’

  ‘You didn’t see him on Saturday night?’

  ‘You mean the night of the …?’

  ‘The night the child was killed. Yes.’

  She shook her head rapidly back and forth.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. Yes. I’d have remembered such a thing. On that evening …’

  ‘He never came to this house? On any occasion?’

  ‘Never.’ She deliberated, then she said: ‘Oh, of course, he always walked me back. But he never came nearer to the house than here. This tennis court.’

  ‘You won’t mind giving me his name?’ She stared at him, her mouth slightly open. ‘He’s at the army convalescent home, isn’t he?’

  ‘But he has nothing to … You can’t imagine that …’

  ‘Everything has to be checked. Routine. Routine, that’s all.’

  ‘His name is Patrick McNamara. Corporal.’ Then she added: ‘He rang me.’

  ‘Rang you? When do you mean?’

  ‘Yesterday. In the morning. When you had gone off somewhere. To lunch was it? He’d read in the paper about … what had happened.’ At the last three words, her voice sank to a whisper. ‘He wanted to know if I was all right, needed anything. He wanted to see me. I didn’t want to see him.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  She turned towards him, startled.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to see him?’

  ‘I was … not in the mood.’ Suddenly her voice cracked, tears were imminent. ‘I … I’m not really in the mood for anything.’

  That uneasy pity, which he did not want to feel for her and yet could not help feeling for her, intensified. He put out a hand and placed it over the two hands which she was clasping before her as she leant forward, her elbows on her knees. ‘I think you’re taking all this too hardly, aren’t you?’

  Her eyes, dull pupils surrounded by yellow, fixed on him with a terrible desolation. ‘ I feel … responsible,’ she said in a voice so low that he could hardly catch the words.

  ‘Responsible?’

  ‘I mean … If I hadn’t taken that pill, hadn’t slept so soundly. He was in my charge and then someone slipped in like that and managed to steal him …’ A strange word to use, steal; but it was even stranger that it should chime in Singh’s memory with Mukerjee’s account of how, thundering by on his horse, Toby had called out: ‘My boy has been stolen!’, and with his own recollection of Toby using the same word to to him.

  ‘I don’t think anyone can blame you for that. Dr McGregor has told me that those particular pills for migraine have bromide in them. If you’d taken two or three in the course of the day, the effect would have built up.’

  ‘Then you’ve spoken to Dr McGregor about them already?’

  He smiled. ‘Of course.’

  Wearily, her head on one side, she said: ‘She thinks I’m to blame.’

  ‘She? Who?’

  ‘Mrs Thompson.’

  ‘Has she said something then?’

  ‘No. No, no. But I know. She has a way of letting me know – without any words.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re imagining that.’

  Clare shook her head. ‘That’s really why I feel I must leave. As soon as it’s possible.’

  ‘As soon as it’s possible, I’ll tell you. It’ll only be another three or four days.’ He gave a sympathetic smile. ‘Promise.’

  Clare was about to get up. Then she sank back, as he continued: ‘Oh, yes – one other thing. How did you – how did you get this job? Of nurse, governess.’

  ‘Well, I …’ She was clearly at a loss.

  ‘I mean, did you answer an advertisement? Or did someone tell you about the job, recommend you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well? How then?’

  She turned her face to his, drawing back her lips in a curious grimace, which revealed not merely her teeth but also the gums. It was as if she were tasting something bitter. Then she said: ‘ Mr Thompson asked me if I’d like the job. I worked for him in one of his hotels. The Plaza. I happened to mention to him that I … I wanted a change. And he … They happened to need someone to look after … It was just like that.’

  ‘By chance?’ He was gazing at her intently.

  ‘Yes, by chance. At the time, I thought it was by luck.’ Again that strange grimace, as though something intolerably bitter were resting on her tongue.

  ‘What work was it that you did in the hotel?’

  ‘What work? Clerk. In reception. Boring work. And the hot weather was just starting, so I wanted to get away to the hills.’

  ‘Well, that’s understandable. Perfectly understandable.’ He rose and slowly she rose after him, stooping over the seat to pick up the handkerchief, which she then shook out before replacing it in her pocket. ‘Thank you, Miss O’Connor.’

  ‘There’s nothing else you want to know?’ Her voice quavered.

  ‘Nothing else. For the moment.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  After a dinner during which those eating were as silent as the white-uniformed servants waiting on them, Isabel and Toby sat alone in the drawing room. Their chairs faced each other. Each body was awkwardly tilted away from the other and each face was shielded with a hand. Isabel read a women’s magazine, Toby a copy of the Statesman in which there was a sensational account of the murder by an elderly journalist, known to him and disliked for his radical views, who usually wrote, not about crime, but about foreign affairs.

  The case has its baffling aspects. The natural assumption is that this is yet another instance of the all too frequent acts of terrorism, some even against women or, as in this case, children, which have been taking place in this country i
n recent months. But a problem remains. A household is locked up for the night – its master has even, as is his custom, gone from room to room to make sure that every lock and bolt is securely fastened. All the members of the family have retired. In the course of the night, at an hour estimated as being between three and four, the child is removed from the room in which he sleeps with his governess, either dead or still alive. There is no indication that the house has been broken into, though a window of the drawing room is found apparently unfastened from within. Clearly the murderer was someone who could move without disturbing the rest of the household; who knew how to handle a child; who may even have been so familiar to this particular child as to cause him no alarm; who knew how to unfasten the bolt and latch of the drawing-room window without any noise and who also knew the whereabouts of the servants’ little-used outside privy, in which the mutilated body was found …

  Toby breathed deeply and yet more deeply; the innuendoes were clear. Someone in the household, whether a member of the family or a servant, was the killer and not a dacoit. He glanced over the top of the newspaper at Isabel but, though she had noticed the increasing heaviness of his breathing, as though he had fallen into an after-dinner doze, she did not look back at him. Her lips were pursed, one hand still shielded her eyes. Toby crackled the sheets of the paper together and then threw it to the ground. He laid his head back against the chair and stared sideways at the window through which Singh had decided that the murderer or murderers must have carried the child. There was a sound as of a firecracker exploding, followed by a reverberating boom. Earlier that day, a storm had taken place, it had rained, the temperature had fallen. Now it was clear that, as the curtained drawing room grew more and more sultry, another storm was coming.

  ‘Strange,’ Toby murmured.

  Isabel looked up, frowning, as though she did not welcome an interruption to her reading. ‘What’s strange?’

  ‘When I first knew you, you were so terrified of lightning and thunder. Remember? And now – you don’t even notice it.’

  ‘There are many things of which I was once terrified.’ Her voice was hollow. ‘One grows older, one grows more hardened.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose so.’ Again he stared at the folds of the velvet over the window. But a problem remains …

  All at once Isabel gave a snorting laugh. ‘It’s not true what they say about lightning, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About its never striking twice in the same place.’ He stared at her, she stared back with narrowed eyes. ‘ Jack, Peter,’ she said.

  There was a knock at the door, so light that, as they continued to stare at each other, neither of them noticed it. The knock was repeated, more loudly.

  ‘Yes!’ Isabel called.

  Clare’s head appeared round the door. Toby gazed at her, as though beseeching her not to come in, to say nothing, to go away.

  But: ‘May I have word?’ she asked composedly.

  Neither Isabel nor Toby replied. Clare edged into the room. Then Toby half rose: ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Thompson.’ Clare sat upright in the middle of the sofa, between their two chairs. A chiffon scarf was tied jauntily around her neck, left bare by the plunging vee, picked out in sequins, of her evening dress. She opened her purse, took out cigarette case, holder and lighter, and then looked first at Isabel and then at Toby: ‘You don’t mind?’

  For two or three seconds, as though each of them was waiting on the other, there came no answer. Then Toby cleared his throat and said: ‘No, go ahead. Please.’ He picked up an ashtray from the table beside him and balanced it on an arm of the sofa.

  Clare drew in on the cigarette, sucking the smoke deep into her lungs and expelling it through her nostrils. Suddenly, after her distracted air throughout the last days, she seemed to have achieved a surprising calm. When she spoke, it was in a firm, steady voice, totally unlike the tremulous, hesitant one which she had been using whenever circumstances had obliged her to say anything, however brief, to any of them. ‘ I know you want me to go,’ she said.

  Again Isabel and Toby seemed to be waiting on each other for an answer. At last, Isabel laid her magazine down on one of her ample knees, a finger between its pages: ‘It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting. But there’s nothing now for you to do here. Is there?’

  ‘But of course there’s no hurry,’ Toby put in, embarrassed. ‘And of course we’ll pay your fare home and make sure that, well, that you’re financially all right. That goes without saying.’ He glanced over to Isabel, whose face had stiffened. ‘You must stay just as long as you want to stay.’

  ‘It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting.’ With extraordinary boldness, Clare now echoed Isabel’s previous words to her. ‘But for the moment I have to stay. That’s really all I wanted to tell you when I came in here. Inspector Singh’s told me I can’t leave at once. I have to wait until he tells me.’

  Toby stared at her, his mouth half-open to reveal his small, irregular teeth. ‘He forbade you to go?’

  ‘Well … yes.’

  Toby stooped and picked up the copy of the Statesman. He began to tidy its sheets. ‘I suppose that makes sense,’ he said, head lowered. ‘Until the inquest is over. Which, if I’ve understood him aright, won’t take place for some time yet.’

  Clare shrank. ‘He said nothing to me about an inquest.’

  Isabel gave a small, cruel smile. ‘Well, there must be an inquest. There could hardly not be one. And you must presumably be a witness.’

  ‘I?’

  ‘Well, of course. How could you not be? You’ll be asked to give your account of all the circumstances.’ Isabel lowered lids over eyes suddenly feverish with resentment and hatred. ‘After all, you were the last person to see my son alive.’ She put the back of a hand to her mouth; for the first time for days she was about to break down. Then she added: ‘Apart from his killer – or killers – of course.’

  Toby stared at Isabel with a mixture of dread and shock. Then he turned to Clare, who had risen shakily to her feet, one hand to the frivolous chiffon scarf, while the other grasped the cigarette holder. The abrupt movement of her rising had sprayed ash in an arc across the arm of Toby’s chair.

  Clare cried out, with barely suppressed hysteria: ‘You blame me, you blame me!’

  Isabel shrugged.

  Toby also now rose. ‘No one blames anyone.’

  ‘Your wife blames me!’

  ‘No, no, no.’ He held out both hands placatingly towards her, as though he expected her to take them.

  But Clare swung away from him. ‘You can be sure,’ she said over her shoulder, a hand on the doorknob, ‘that just as soon as this inquest is over, I’ll be out of this house.’ She slammed the door behind her.

  Toby flopped back into his chair, put his hands over his eyes, drew them slowly down his cheeks. He gave a muffled groan.

  Isabel raised her magazine, opened it, began to read.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Helen had been out riding alone.

  ‘Why don’t you come riding with me?’ she had suggested to her father but, slumped in a chair, hands deep in pockets and doing nothing, he had merely shaken his head, with a deep, shuddering sigh.

  At first, she had walked the horse, the lethargic pace suiting her mood of lethargy; but then, when she had climbed up into the hills, beyond the last house or even mud hut or corrugated-iron shed, she felt a sudden upsurge of spirits. First she cantered, then recklessly she forced the horse to gallop despite the unevenness of the ground, with its jagged stones, exposed roots and sudden hillocks.

  On and on she galloped, the tip of her tongue protruding from between her half-open lips and her body straining forwards, when ominously, from the other side of the lake, she heard a clap of thunder. She had seen no lightning. Clouds began to amass, lurid bank on bank, with the swiftness with which, up here in this narrow valley, a day of gentle sunshine became one of raging storm. She je
rked the horse round, kicked at his flanks with her heels. She was wearing nothing more protective than jodhpurs and an aertex shirt. Long before she reached home, with another, far noisier clap of thunder, the rain was streaming all about her; but as she felt it on her forehead and in her hair and then penetrating through her clothing to her skin, it only intensified her mood of sudden, inexplicable joy.

  The syce, a hessian bag over his head like a hood, scuttled out into the yard and took the horse from her. He glanced involuntarily at the points of her nipples against her soaked shirt and then looked away. She smiled at him, though he did not see it, and ran round to the front door and so into the house.

  In the morning room her father still sat slumped in the same chair as when she had left. Through the open door he gave her a stricken glance. ‘Rain?’ He seemed surprised that she should be soaked, even though he must have seen the storm through the window and heard the spatter of the raindrops which it hurled on to the glass.

  ‘Yes, rain,’ she confirmed and then, still feeling that unreasoning joy with which she had ridden at breakneck speed under that low, streaming sky, she let out a laugh. He turned his head away quickly, as though she had uttered some obscenity.

  In twos and threes, she raced up the stairs, scattering water on banisters and carpet. She flung her bedroom door wide.

  The startled ayah faced her, turning round from a drawer pulled open on an unaccustomed disorder of clothes. For a second the ayah appeared to be about to duck under her arm in order to flee. But instead she straightened, tucked her elbows into her sides and gave a little bow of acknowledgement.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  The ayah pointed to the open drawer. ‘I was tidying memsahib’s things.’

  ‘Untidying them, by the looks of it.’ Helen strode over to the chest-of-drawers, brushing so close to the ayah that her wet jodhpurs left a dark mark on the Indian woman’s sari, and pushed the drawer back. She turned and glared at the ayah. The ayah did not flinch. ‘Out.’