“Oh my God,” said Julia.
We began to run across the churchyard, none of us doubting, I think, that the Rectory was the scene of whatever catastrophe we had come in time or too late to avert.
The lamp above the doorway of the church barely served to show us the way between the gravestones, round which white skeins of mist wound shifting and deceptive spirals. We were running, as it seemed, in a world of darkness and silence, hearing hardly even our own footsteps on the soft grass and no other sound at all.
It occurred to me, as we drew nearer, that there was something more than natural about the silence. Should we not be hearing a hiss and crackle of flame, the crashing and tearing of timbers? Could any building burn without a sound? I became conscious also of the absence of smoke and heat.
It was Selena, outdistancing Julia and myself, who was the first to perceive the truth of the matter: it was not the Rectory that was burning—someone had lit a bonfire in the garden at the back.
But February is not the month for bonfires.
Standing outside the high uncurtained windows and gazing through the long black drawing room, we saw that the fire was still some sixty or seventy feet away, beyond the conservatory. It was a well-constructed bonfire, ten feet or more in height, built in the shape of a pyramid round a tall stake planted firmly in the ground, as bonfires were built in the days when their purpose was more serious and sinister than the destruction of a rag-filled effigy for the entertainment of children. The flames leapt up towards the starless sky, filling the room before us with a grotesque pavane of endlessly moving shadows.
Between the bonfire and the house a figure ran to and fro, assiduously nourishing the voracity of the flames. Distorted by the firelight, it seemed constantly to change in shape and size, to be sometimes something more, sometimes something less than human. Its face, however, when I saw it at last, was the beautiful, dangerous face of Terry Carver.
Pushing in despair or irrational optimism at the front door, Julia found that it was open, as if we had been expected.
21
THERE WERE FOUR PEOPLE in the long dark drawing room, silently watching the flickering light of the bonfire. On one of the black chaises longues, two young women sat hand in hand, one red-haired and of boyish appearance, the other fair, with a pleasing roundness of face and figure. On another, facing them, was a heavily built man with a handlebar moustache. Sitting next to him was Regina, who rose, smiling, and asked us what we would like to drink.
“You seem,” said Julia, “to be expecting us.”
“Yes, of course,” said her aunt. “I rang your Chambers to ask your advice about something and your Clerk said you were all on your way down here. He didn’t seem quite to know why, but I thought you must have guessed what we were doing and decided to come and help.”
“No,” said Julia. “Not exactly—what are you doing?” “Burning papers,” said Regina. “You know—the way they do in embassies.”
It had occurred to Ricky Farnham that morning that the inquest on Daphne might end in an open verdict, or even a verdict of murder; that the police, in that event, might think it their duty to examine in detail any letters and other documents to be found at the Rectory, in case these contained some clue to the identity of the culprit; that these would include any papers kept by Isabella for the purpose of her blackmailing business; and that distress and embarrassment might be caused by these finding their way into, as it were, the public domain. Having thought of this, he went round to High Street to talk to Regina.
Regina still had the key that Daphne had given her: once Ricky had explained the problem, they had gone round to the Rectory with the intention of removing anything which could prove embarrassing. They had been thwarted, however, by the volume of documents involved: there were several dozen boxes of files, all at a rapid glance containing material which might be compromising.
“So we decided to burn them,” said Regina, “and Griselda said she’d build a bonfire. But then it occurred to us that now Daphne’s dead everything at the Rectory belongs to Terry and perhaps we ought to tell him what we were doing. And I knew he was working at New Square this morning, so I rang up and explained it all to him and he said he’d come down.”
Regina explained these matters with the confident serenity of a high-principled woman who knows that she is doing the right thing; I did not believe for a moment that she was telling the entire truth. She could not have failed—indeed, it was clear that she had not failed—to see the possible relevance of Isabella’s files to the mystery of Daphne’s death: if she had agreed to destroy them, it must mean that to her the death was no longer mysterious. Either she knew for certain that it had not been murder—but I did not see how she could be certain of that—or, knowing that it was, nonetheless thought it right to protect the person responsible.
Looking from one to another of them, I wondered which of her friends she would think it right to protect, even if guilty of murder. The devoted Ricky? The impulsive Griselda? The gentle Mrs. Tyrrell?
But then at last the truth became clear to me and I knew that it was none of these.
“The letter,” I said. “You mustn’t burn the letter. There must have been a letter from Maurice—you haven’t burnt it?”
“Not yet,” said Regina. “We thought we ought to ask Julia whether anyone could say we were doing something illegal. That’s why I tried to ring her.”
Christmas Eve
Dear Daphne,
It may seem unkind, some may even think ungrateful, but I am going to kill you. You have left me with—
No, it would not be true to say that I have no choice. The alternative would be to kill myself. That indeed was my intention when I prepared the poison—it was for myself, not you, that I chose hemlock. I would not have chosen it for you.
It was one of the plants that Reg and Griselda rescued from the physic garden at the Rectory. About a week after my Virgil frontispiece disappeared I went out late at night and dug it up by the roots: I had read in some learned journal or other an article about the death of Socrates, which mentioned that the root is the most poisonous part. The writer was a scholar of considerable eminence—I am sure that he can be relied on. I ground it up into a powder and prepared a decoction in the way he described. I had begun by meaning to take the poison straightaway, but found when I had made it that I felt better and no longer wanted to. I put it in a bottle with an airtight stopper and hid it away in a cupboard in my bedroom, taking great comfort from the thought that it was there if I needed it.
But please understand that even then it was your presence, not Derek’s absence, which had made my life seem insupportable. By the time I knew him, you had already begun to make me feel a little desperate; you brought me presents that I did not want and you could not afford; you insisted on doing things for me which I would much rather have done for myself; you praised me in immoderate and embarrassing terms for qualities I do not have and achievements of which you are no judge. In return, you seemed to feel entitled to make demands on my time and emotional energy more absolute and more implacable than a newborn baby could reasonably make of its mother. Where I went, you followed; I could not go out without meeting you; I could not stay at home without your ringing my doorbell. I could see neither how to endure nor how to escape your endless, stifling thereness.
And then there was Derek and life became bearable again. Oh, more than bearable—golden, delightful, like the first day of spring after a long, dark winter, full of laughter and pleasure. I thought that I had never been so happy, not even when I was very young. I almost imagined that God was rewarding me for being patient with you and I thought how generous it was, when all I had prayed for was a little peace and privacy.
It ended, as you know, very painfully for me, but I have no wish to say any more about that.
While I was grieving for my loss and had no strength to protect myself, nor any consciousness of the need to do so, you somehow took possession of my life. It became an acc
epted thing that I was a kind of invalid and you were looking after me. You cooked and cleaned and shopped for me; you even did something you called looking after my garden—oh, my poor garden. You stayed with me all day from morning till night to make sure that I should not be lonely—though you quickly made other visitors feel that they had stayed inconsiderately long.
And I only wanted you to go away.
The more I was with you, the more I longed for Derek. I regretted bitterly the letter I had written him; I wished that I’d pretended not to know who had taken the frontispiece. I no longer cared if he was a thief, a liar and insincere in his affection for me; I would rather have lived in a world of absolute illusion than one from which irony and elegance had so utterly perished.
I still felt that I ought to try not to hurt your feelings. My life became a series of tactful excuses. I said that I had lost my appetite, rather than admit that the food you cooked disgusted me; that I was too tired to sit up in the evening, rather than let you see how weary I was of your company; that I was too unwell to go out, when the only way I could avoid you was to stay at home and pretend not to hear the doorbell.
But when the effort became too much and I began to say things that were unkind, quite seriously unkind, I found that it made no difference. You understood, you said, that it was “the pain talking.” By defining me as ill, you somehow managed to convert everything I said into its opposite; you construed expressions of anger as signs of affection; you translated every plea for solitude into an appeal for company.
I became more and more unkind to you—I said things more wounding than I had ever imagined saying to anyone. I told you that your conversation bored me, that your voice set my teeth on edge, that I found you personally distasteful. You cried; but you did not go away—this, it seemed, was your idea of friendship.
And something horrible began to happen to me.
Though I know all too well that I am often less thoughtful, less generous, less actively kind than I ought to be, I have always believed myself incapable of deliberate cruelty; I found it incomprehensible that anyone could take pleasure in causing pain. But now I began to find that I enjoyed hurting you; when I said something particularly wounding, I no longer felt remorse but a kind of loathsome satisfaction. Sometimes the desire even to hurt you physically was so powerful that I trembled with the effort of resisting it. I no longer found it extraordinary that people might take pleasure in tormenting a child or a helpless animal: I saw that they were merely like me and moved by the same impulse.
And if this impulse was simply a part of human nature, I wondered if it was also a part of the nature of God. I had from time to time, of course, the usual doubts about the existence of God, especially as I could never really solve the problem of why, if He exists, He should allow the innocent to suffer; but I had never doubted that if He existed, He was benevolent. But it now occurred to me that perhaps He enjoyed our suffering—that perhaps, indeed, He had created us for that purpose—it would explain everything. I thought that if I believed this I would not wish to go on living.
But until last night I never dreamt of killing you.
No, that’s not true. I did dream of it, every night, and by means far more painful and violent than poison. But in my waking hours I knew that it was out of the question: you meant well and were doing your best and it was not your fault that I had become a monster. If death was the only solution, I quite accepted that it must be mine, not yours.
Until last night.
How did you ever come to let me find the frontispiece? You thought, I suppose, that it was quite cleverly hidden in the middle of the pile of old newspapers that you keep to line the floor of the aviary. But did you really imagine, even though only an edge of it was showing, that I would not see and recognise a thing I had so much loved and valued? And why hide it at all? Why not merely destroy it? Surely not because it was beautiful? You knew, I suppose, that it was worth money—was it merely its commercial value that saved it from destruction?
Perhaps a psychoanalyst would say that when you left me alone there, in that hideous black drawing room, you subconsciously wanted me to find it. But even so, with what motive? From a sense of guilt, or one of triumph?
I hardly understood at first what it meant to find it there. And yet after a few moments I saw how easy it must have been for you—a question merely of leaving my back door unlocked when you put out the rubbish that morning. You would have known how unlikely I was to notice. And that night creeping back into the house in the darkness, while Derek and I were already in bed upstairs—
I felt sick at the thought of it—at that moment, it would have been physically impossible for me to speak to you. I took the frontispiece and left, leaving you still busy in your kitchen with whatever nauseating beverage you were preparing for me as yet a further symbol of your devotion and concern.
And now I do not see why I should die rather than you. You have taken from me the thing that I held most dear; you have stolen all the hope and pleasure from my life; you have made me hate God. You are destroying me by inches like some horrible disease—why should I not defend myself?
By the time you read this you will have eaten, I suppose, at least half of the chocolates I am giving you for Christmas. I think it is safe to tell you that they are poisoned. I spent what remained of the night filling and refilling my fountain pen, as if with ink, from the little bottle of hemlock and carefully discharging it into the base of each chocolate. I did it, I think I may say, quite neatly—I am sure you will not notice anything odd about them.
I shall not give them to you today—I should not like anything to happen to spoil the midnight service. I suppose it will be my last—I should like it to go well. I shall take them to you tomorrow morning, before we go to lunch with Reg, and tell you that I want them to be all for you—I know how greedy you are about chocolates and how pleased you will be not to be expected to share them. And when you go home in the evening you will open the box and eat them, as you always do, one after another until they are all gone.
I intend to place this letter at the bottom of the box. It may be that you will notice it soon after you have finished the top layer of chocolates and that you will still have strength enough to summon help. I do not think, however, that it will be in time to save you; the Athenians, in whom I have great confidence, considered hemlock a most reliable poison.
You may also, of course, have time and strength to denounce me. Even if you do not, I think it unlikely that I can retrieve this letter before it falls into the hands of the police. I suppose that they will put me in prison: but I’m unable to care very much about that—I feel you have made me accustomed to imprisonment.
I do not know if you will suffer much. It was suggested in the article I mentioned that death by hemlock might be less painless than Plato would lead us to believe. You cannot expect me to care a great deal about that: I am human; and God, who delights in suffering, has made me in His own, unspeakable image.
Maurice
His friends all said that the letter should be burnt.
“You see,” said Regina, “we all know he wouldn’t really have done it. It’s quite absurd to think that Maurice could poison anyone. If he hadn’t been taken ill on Christmas Eve, he simply wouldn’t have given Daphne the chocolates. But of course when I found Maurice’s Christmas presents in the drawer of his desk, I gave Daphne the one with her name on it, just as I did with everyone else. So her dying was really just an accident and Maurice is no more to blame for it than I am.”
“What I don’t quite understand,” said Selena, “is how the letter comes to be in your possession.”
“Well,” said Regina, looking slightly surprised, “it was beside the poor girl’s body when I found her. And I didn’t want the police to find it, so I put it away in my handbag before they came. And the empty chocolate box and all the wrappings, of course.”“Oh dear,” said Julia, turning rather pale. “I’m not entirely sure you should have done that, Reg. I think
they might call it tampering with the evidence.”
“Oh nonsense, Julia,” said her aunt. “How could it possibly be right to let the police find something which would only mislead them? I knew perfectly well that Daphne’s death was simply an accident, but if the police had seen Maurice’s letter they’d have been bound to say that he poisoned her on purpose. And then there’d be horrible stories in all the newspapers and that’s how everyone would remember him, not as the kind of person he really was at all. And it simply wouldn’t be fair.”
It was with some difficulty that I persuaded them of the dangers of burning the letter; the danger that the inquest would find on the following Monday that Daphne had died by some criminal act: the danger that some innocent person would be suspected of the crime: the danger, in particular, that the person suspected would be Terry himself They finally agreed that it should be placed in a sealed envelope and lodged in the custody of some respectable bank.
The documents in Isabella’s filing cabinets I did not attempt to save from the bonfire: though their destruction caused me, as an historian, a certain pang of distress, I supposed that it would add to the sum of human happiness. Besides, I could not think quite what else could be done with them.
The only remaining object of contention was the Book; impressively large and bound in leather, as Regina had described it, it still occupied, as it had when she first visited Isabella, the display cabinet at the end of the long drawing room. While disclaiming any superstitious belief in its malevolent powers, they all seemed curiously reluctant to handle it. At length, since books are not among the things I am afraid of, I offered to take custody of it.
On the Wednesday before Easter there was champagne in the Corkscrew: the bookshelves had finally been installed; subject only to the return of the electrician to fit the lights, the refurbishment of 62 New Square was complete.
The Sibyl in Her Grave Page 27