The Dying of the Light: A Mystery

by Michael Dibdin

  The air was still chilly, and her breath flared in the beams of sunlight as she scrubbed and towelled. She had deliberately not drawn the curtains before going to bed the night before. Dorothy was not by nature an early riser, and it had become their habit for Rosemary to go to her room and rouse her. Never had it been more essential for Rosemary to be at her friend’s side than this morning, when Dorothy awoke to the reality of her imminent departure.

  Although Rosemary had been heartened by the show of composure which Dorothy had put on the night before, she had no great hopes that the effect would last. It was one thing to be brave in advance, she knew, but quite another to retain that equanimity when the moment of truth finally arrived. Which was where she came in, as she always had. As long as Dorothy remained at the Lodge, Rosemary would be with her every instant – and even once they were separated, she would be with her in spirit!

  The idea she had thrown out the night before as though it were an inspiration of the moment was in fact something to which Rosemary had devoted a considerable amount of thought. She knew it would prove a huge challenge, but that merely gave her a further incentive to bring it off. Such a challenge was just what she was going to need to see her through the weeks and months ahead. It would distract her attention from the anguish she could do nothing about, and focus it on a problem entirely of her own making and subject to her control.

  There would be no time to brood on her own loneliness or indulge in gloomy speculations about what might be happening to Dorothy. Each moment of every day would be dedicated to working out the next episode of the murderous events at Eventide Lodge, a story so effortlessly complex, so endlessly fascinating, so flawlessly spellbinding, that reality would pale by comparison. Even the ordeals which Dorothy had to endure would be reduced to the status of a minor irritation, an annoying distraction when you are trying to read. This time, at least, the tyranny of the real would not prevail. Rosemary’s alternative account, tight and compelling, never losing its thread or disappointing the expectations it had created, would triumph in the end. She would answer for that!

  The major problem that had to be overcome was the practical one of ensuring that the letters got through. There would be no difficulty at the hospital, of course, despite what Dorothy had rather oddly claimed the night before. She would be able to send and receive as many letters as she liked, at least unless – even to herself, Rosemary avoided the word ‘until’ – her condition deteriorated markedly.

  Rosemary’s position was very different. Although the residents of Eventide Lodge were in theory free to write to their friend and relatives, the letters handed over to Mr Anderson to be posted seemed to fall into a void. Replies either failed to materialize or, almost more disturbing, made no reference to the concerns expressed in the outgoing letter.

  ‘Why should your nearest and dearest waste their precious time scribbling wish-you-were-heres when they’re paying William and I good money to make damn sure you aren’t?’ demanded Miss Davis rhetorically, and although some of the residents, including Rosemary, suspected that their post was being tampered with, this was impossible to prove. Residents were forbidden to use the telephone, on the pretext that Mr Purvey had thrown a fit when one of his relatives hung up on him, and personal visits had virtually ceased. ‘Out of sight and out of our minds,’ Mrs Hargreaves had remarked sadly one day, which had just about seemed to sum it up.

  The present situation, however, was quite different. During the long hours of a largely sleepless night, Rosemary had worked out a system which she would agree with Dorothy prior to the latter’s departure, and which was designed to make it obvious if their letters were being intercepted. Like all good ideas, it was in essence very simple. Every other day Rosemary would dispatch a letter to Dorothy containing the latest episode of the unfolding mystery, ending with the sort of question which traditionally concluded each chapter in a story of this type. ‘Who was the mysterious figure who was seen entering Mr Purvey’s room shortly before the body was discovered?’, for example, or ‘Why did Mrs Hargreaves try and take the wrong mug of cocoa, and what is the connection between this and the fragmentary conversation supposedly overheard by George Channing?’

  The whole point of detective stories, of course, was that there always was a connection. Even if there wasn’t, that was equally significant. It was thus a perfect medium of communication in a situation such as this. All Dorothy need do was send a brief message in reply – a few words on a postcard would suffice – alluding to the developments left hanging. If she felt well enough, she might even assay some suggested solution which Rosemary would then tear to shreds, in the nicest possible way, by return of post. There remained the question of what sanctions to take if it became clear that their letters were not getting through. From what Rosemary had overheard the previous day, she knew Anderson was deeply worried that Dorothy might tell the hospital staff what had happened to Channing. She also knew why. Mrs Anderson, the founder and former owner of the Lodge, had been at considerable pains to reassure the residents – many of whom had become her friends – about what would happen in the event of her death. ‘I’ve left it all to William,’ she’d explained, ‘but only on condition that all of you continue to be properly looked after for the remainder of your lifetimes.’ This stipulation had in fact been the original germ of the murder story. As Rosemary had remarked to Dorothy one day, Mrs Anderson had, with the best intentions in the world, given her son a perfect motive to kill them all.

  It was this which gave Rosemary every confidence that, whatever might happen to other letters, those between her and Dorothy would be allowed through. She proposed to offer Anderson an arrangement to their mutual advantage. As long as Dorothy continued to receive Rosemary’s letters endorsed with a scathing comment or two on the suggestions Dot had appended to her last (Surely you would have heard anyone going into Purvey’s room, Rose? Mrs Hargreaves presumably didn’t know that that mug contained the poisoned cocoa. As for what Channing says he heard, that sounds like a red herring.) then her lips would remain sealed about conditions at Eventide Lodge. But if there was any unexplained hiatus or delay, Dorothy would ask to speak to the chief consultant in confidence, and the next thing Anderson would know the police would be at the door.

  Rosemary was well aware that in making such an agreement she was sacrificing the interests of the other residents – not to mention her own – to ensure Dorothy’s peace of mind. She would have found this impossible to justify to herself, let alone anyone else, she realized as she dressed hurriedly, but the question simply did not arise. There was nothing else she could do. In hospital Dorothy would have the best of medical care, but nothing and no one could replace the complex network of fact and fiction which Rosemary had woven into the intimate fabric of her friend’s consciousness. By manipulating those narrative strings like a loving puppeteer, she could influence events even at a distance, curtailing Dorothy’s isolation, limiting the inevitable pain and damage, protecting, distracting, consoling. She knew Dorothy better than anyone else in the world, she reflected with justifiable pride as she closed the door to her room and stepped out into the corridor. There was nothing her friend could do or think or feel or suffer that she could not foresee and counter.

  The house was perfectly silent and deserted at that early hour. Rosemary stepped lightly along the strip of red linoleum, past doors giving on to bedrooms still in use or given over to dust and spiders. At one point there was a low window with a breathtaking view of the parkland at the front of the Lodge, trees, walls and hedges melting insubstantially into a dense layer of low mist above which the sun rose in a pale blue sky. Rosemary reluctantly turned aside to enter the dark plasterboard cubicle opposite. She hesitated a moment before George Channing’s door, then tapped lightly on the other side. There was no answer. She turned the handle quietly and stepped inside.

  On this side of the house, cut off from the sun, the dim light made it seem several hours earlier, but the formless mass of the covers reveal
ed that Dorothy was still in bed. Rosemary breathed a sigh of relief. At the back of her mind all along had been the fear that her friend might have spent a sleepless night pacing the floor in growing panic at the prospect facing her. In that case, she might well have been so distraught by now that any attempts to help would have been in vain. The last thing Rosemary wanted to do was to deprive her friend of a single moment of healing rest. All she planned was to be there when the sleeper awoke, ready to offer succour and support.

  The room smelt stuffy and unclean. Rosemary went over to the window and raised the bottom sash to allow the clean morning air to flow in. A low growl raised the hairs on her arms and the nape of her neck. In the wilderness of the abandoned kitchen garden below, the tethered Doberman sat perched on its haunches, every muscle tensed, staring up at her with an expression of pure malevolence.

  She stepped quickly back into the room, out of the beast’s view. Then, collecting herself with an effort, she forced herself to look out once more. The dog had its back to the window and its nose to the ground, inspecting the results of its previous activity. Rosemary now realized that this had involved nothing more sinister than ‘doing its business’, as she described it to herself.

  With a discreet sniff of distaste, mingled with scorn for her weakness in allowing herself to be frightened by such a thing, she crossed to the chair she had occupied the night before and sat down to wait for Dorothy to stir. The dog’s attention must have been drawn by the noise of the window being opened, she thought, and like all animals it disliked being surprised at such a moment. As for the expression she had read in its eyes, Rosemary reminded herself sharply that malevolence, like its opposite, was an exclusively human attribute.

  What revived her fear was not another sound but the silence gathering about her, an intrusive and imposing presence in the room. Then there was the smell as well, which she could no longer pretend was just the stuffiness to be expected in a room where someone has been sleeping. There was another component to it, an acrid whiff of something at once familiar and bizarre, intimate and faintly disgusting, which asserted itself above the ambient odours of decay and neglect.

  Rosemary got to her feet, looking about her apprehensively. The first thing she saw was the paper, lying on the floor near the head of the bed. It was an ordinary sheet of writing paper, but when she stooped to pick it up, she was surprised to find her name written in block capitals. She turned the page over and quickly scanned the lines of wavery writing on the other side.

  She straightened up slowly, seemingly mesmerized by the patch of wall just above the bed, where the grudging daylight made the wallpaper gleam dully. All around, the massed shadows crowded in at the margins of her vision. It was a very long time before she could bring herself to look directly at that darkness, but when she did it immediately receded, laying bare the figure lying on the rumpled covers, the head tilted sideways across the pillow, the eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, the mouth gaping wide, the puddle of vomit collected on the sheets and in the hollow at the base of the throat.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 7

  Not so bad after all in the end, thought Jarvis as he slammed the Fiesta’s door and crunched across the gravel towards the house. He hadn’t been best pleased when Tomkins had come down with food poisoning, leaving him to handle this chore on his own, but the drive out across the hills, not to mention the pint of bitter he’d found time for on the way, had done wonders to bring him round to the idea. As for Tomkins, serve him damn well right. Nothing like a dose of the bloody flux to cure the lad of his addiction to surf ’n’ turf bars for the foreseeable future.

  He climbed the short flight of steps leading to the front door and heaved on the bell-pull. Gentry did well for themselves in those days, he thought, eyeing the massive boot-scraper. Coming home of a morning, their hand-tooled leather clogged with the poor sods they’d ridden roughshod over. Still, even for the riff-raff it must have been some compensation to know what the rules were, and that they wouldn’t change in their lifetime.

  Were we really that much better off, when you got right down to it? All depends what you mean by better, doesn’t it? What is truth? What’s it all about, Alfie? Where are the snows of yesteryear? How much is that doggy in the window? Pass, thought Jarvis, whose secret fantasy was to appear on Mastermind (‘Your chosen subject: Accrington Stanley’s line-up, results and week-by-week league position, 1956–1962’).

  The door was opened by a lanky man in his mid-forties wearing a blue blazer and white flannel trousers. His long florid face rose to a mat of slicked hair which had receded to the centre of his skull. In his left hand he held a cut-glass tumbler filled with an amber liquid. He peered at Jarvis.

  ‘Not today, thank you,’ he said, starting to close the door. ‘Nor indeed any other day, for that matter.’

  Jarvis flashed a regulation smile.

  ‘Mr Anderson? I believe you’re expecting me.’

  The man eyed him blearily.

  ‘You may also believe that the earth is flat, for all I know. It doesn’t follow that such is in fact the case.’

  Jarvis felt his guts clench as though in the first stirrings of indigestion. Just when everything had seemed to be going so well. He unbuttoned the dark blue overcoat he’d got half-price in the sales, revealing an acrylic-rich suit from which he produced his warrant card.

  ‘Detective-Inspector Stanley Jarvis, sir. I am calling with regard to Mrs Dorothy Hilda Davenport, née Cooke, deceased.’

  The man squinted at the warrant card.

  ‘You don’t look anything like the person in this photograph.’

  ‘I was given to understand that you had been informed of and had agreed to this visit,’ snarled Jarvis, with whom the quantity of weight gained and hair lost over the past few years was a sore point. ‘One of my associates was in telephonic communication with a certain …’

  He took out his notebook.

  ‘… Miss Davis.’

  Anderson raised his hands in surrender.

  ‘Ah, the fair Letitia! That explains everything. Say no more, Inspector! I’ll come quietly, it’s a fair cop, lock me up for my own good, I get these terrible urges, etcetera etcetera.’

  He opened the door wide and Jarvis stepped inside. The hall was deep, bare and resonant. A boar’s head projected from a trophy hung high on one wall. Next to the door stood an elephant’s foot hollowed out to take an assortment of sticks and umbrellas. The air was chill and dank, the light dull.

  ‘This way, Inspector!’

  Anderson padded across the flagstones towards a lighted doorway. Hush Puppies squealing underfoot, Jarvis followed. The room they entered was small and windowless and smelt strongly of mould. All four walls were covered in shelving crammed with books of every conceivable size, shape and colour. The furniture consisted of a leather armchair which had seen better days and an antique writing-desk supporting an array of spirit bottles.

  Jarvis looked round at the serried spines and titles, most of which were either illegible or incomprehensible. Several were in foreign languages. None seemed to have anything to do with the history or fortunes of Accrington Stanley FC.

  ‘Like books, do you, sir?’ he remarked archly.

  ‘How very astute of you, Inspector. One can readily see why you have risen to a position of such eminence. As you so rightly surmise, bibliomania is indeed one of my principal pleasures, the other being alcoholism.’

  He selected one of the bottles from the escritoire and poured a generous quantity into his tumbler.

  ‘I’d be more than happy to offer you a dram,’ he told Jarvis heartily, ‘but generations of literary coppers saying “Not while I’m on duty, sir” have no doubt made it impossible for you to accept such an offer even if you felt so inclined. Thus are we constrained by fictions.’

  Leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, Anderson fixed his visitor with an expression of polite attention. Jarvis realized it was incumbent on him to say something. He consulte
d his thoughts. They were empty.

  ‘This is just a routine visit, sir,’ he declared.

  ‘That’s what they all say, Inspector.’

  Jarvis cleared his throat.

  ‘Who all?’ he demanded. ‘I mean, all who?’

  That didn’t sound right either.

  ‘Along with refusing a drink because they’re on duty,’ said Anderson, taking a gulp of his whisky.

  We’ve got a right one here, thought Jarvis. He inhaled deeply and massaged the bridge of his nose. Accrington Stanley 4, Stockport County 0. Gateshead 1, Accrington Stanley 1.

  ‘According to the officers called to the scene last Tuesday,’ he said, ‘one of the patients here, a Mrs …’

  He glanced at his notebook again.

  ‘… Miss Rosemary Travis, made certain allegations regarding the circumstances surrounding Mrs Davenport’s death.’

  Anderson giggled.

  ‘Glitches,’ he said.

  Jarvis goggled.

  ‘Witches?’

  ‘Bats,’ said Anderson, heaving at his whisky. ‘In the belfry. Bugs in the program. If our clients – the preferred term, incidentally – were user-friendly, they wouldn’t be.’

  Jarvis got out his pen and executed a doodle in his notebook.

  ‘Wouldn’t be what?’ he murmured.

  ‘In loco clientis,’ replied Anderson as though the point were obvious. ‘If they weren’t already loco.’

  Catching Jarvis’s expression, he put his glass down and made pantomime gestures indicating insanity.

  ‘IF ALL THERE, NOT ALL HERE!’

  Jarvis assumed an expression intended to impress on Anderson the manner of man with whom he had to do. Catching sight of himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he decided he just looked constipated.