‘He is upstairs in his room,’ the dark one said. ‘I met him as I was bringing in the washing. He chased me upstairs.’
‘And you never told me. You bitch. That is the colloquial word. You bitch.’
‘But I am not. What does it exactly mean? Ought one to use such a word in compositions? English is so difficult.’
‘Tell me, did he catch you? The truth now.’
A slow blush.
‘Yes, he did catch me.’
The small voice.
‘And what did he do?’
Blue eyes bright. Avid curiosity.
‘He kissed me.’
‘And then?’
‘I broke away and ran into our room. I locked the door.’
‘You locked the door?’
‘Of course.’
‘And in tragedy there must too be the element of irony.’
Chapter 13
Jim Henderson joined the rest of the party in the meditation hall. They were sitting on the two rows of canvas chairs facing each other.
The chair that Flaveen Mills had used had been discreetly removed.
But no amount of discretion could remove the fact of her death.
The constable coming in at regular intervals. The polite requests that one of them should see Superintendent Padbourne in the warden’s office.
They sat for the most part in silence. If they talked it would be about the murder. No one appeared to want to say more than had already been said about that.
Mr Utamaro had directed them to consider the koan, ‘If all things are reducible to One, what is One to be reduced to?’
It had awakened no enthusiasm.
Jim sat on the chair left vacant for him without a word. No one greeted him.
Gerry lit a cigarette. The ashtray at his feet was crowded with butts.
Mr Applecheek stood up.
‘All things appear to me to be reducible to the death of that poor girl,’ he said. ‘I shall take a walk in the garden. It is unfortunately true that pleasant scenes can distract us. I shall be weak enough to allow that to happen.’
The others paid little attention.
Mr Applecheek went to the door and opened it.
‘My cowardly escape will go unnoticed,’ he said.
He left them with a vague gesture. Perhaps of benediction.
There was no longer a constable at the front door and Mr Applecheek hurried out and round the house to the lawn under the massy cedar of Lebanon. Once in sight of the tree he slowed down and gazed up into its dark branches as he slowly walked towards the creviced trunk.
When he got up to it he gave the gnarled bark a friendly pat and said:
‘No doubt, my dear fellow, you will be as uncommunicative as my fellow students, but at least I will not be in a continual state of wondering how much you know. From you I have no secrets.’
He patted back into place a loose flap of bark.
Mr Utamaro.
Like a jack-in-the-box stepping from behind the enormous trunk.
For a moment Mr Applecheek quailed.
‘The trouble with keeping a secret,’ Mr Utamaro said, ‘is that after a while it keeps you.’
‘Very true, my dear fellow, very true. And remarkably apposite, too. Though perhaps, as is the way of epigrams, just a little too bright, too somehow shiny.’
‘It is a question of using whatever weapon comes to hand,’ Mr Utamaro said. ‘The main thing is that the attack must be as much of a shock as possible. Though in this particular case I had no great hopes.’
The slight trouble with the letter l. A trace of what in an Englishman would be pedantry.
‘It is a curious thing,’ said Mr Applecheek, ‘but in spite of my burden of guilt I seem to be impervious to sudden accusations and unexpected betrayals. Perhaps it is because I have so often anticipated them in my mind.’
‘I noticed on Sunday evening how little Mr Manvers’ discovery of you in this tree disconcerted you. That was what made me doubt of success just now.’
‘Yes,’ Mr Applecheek said, ‘I had that very incident in mind. It was a delightful example of what one, to use a slang egression, gets away with. I had no doubt both you and the offers felt the matter needed an explanation, but by simply not offering one I evaded the necessity of entering into, details painful to myself.’
He shrugged his shoulders. At length.
‘Anyhow, my dear chap,’ he said, ‘I’m delighted to have had this conversation with you. Delighted. Of course, a clergyman ou§ht not to avoid painful confessions etcetera, but possibly to an anti-religious such as yourself the spectacle of one doing so would be pleasing. I don’t know. I don’t really know.’
The voice trailing away. Mr Applecheek trailing away. Across the smooth turf, back towards the house. Trailing, drifting. Still wearing a pair of leather slippers, heel less, sloppy.
He reached the corner and without looking back lifted his left hand and let it fall in a gesture of gradual farewell.
In ten strides Mr Utamaro caught up with him. In two strides more he passed him. He wheeled round and stood facing him on the coarse gravel of the drive.
A tuft of grass growing precariously in the unpropitious ground.
Mr Utamaro standing feet astride, a broad shape blocking the way. In the breeze his black kimono stirred slightly, revealing the solid body underneath. Mr Applecheek halted. Off balance, tall, stooping, faintly swaying.
Mr Utamaro’s hand shot up. The index finger pointing at Mr Applecheek’s chest. A rock steady weapon.
‘Why did you kill Flaveen Mills?’ he said.
Mr Applecheek stopped blinking.
For an instant he looked at Mr Utamaro with wide eyes. Then gradually the eyelids sank until the lashes met. A weight yielded to.
Nothing said.
Shoulders slowly drooping.
Mr Utamaro stood without moving. Legs astride, firmly planted. Broad shoulders unbulging, blocking the way. Hand still extended, the index finger pointing without a quiver.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Applecheek.
Mr Utamaro was silent.
‘Could I sit down?’ Mr Applecheek said.
Each word uttered with difficulty. Escaping from under a weighty trapdoor.
The stocky Japanese took him by the arm. A single deliberate swift movement.
He led him quietly round the corner of the house again, across the lawn to the stone seat where he had talked about death to Flaveen Mills.
Mr Applecheek sat down and felt at the cool stone. Reassurance sought. The immovable stone. His eyes closed again.
Mr Utamaro sat beside him. Waiting.
The old clergyman opened his eyes.
‘I didn’t kill the girl,’ he said. ‘Whatever else is to be said, I did not actually take the weapon and strike.’
‘And yet you killed her,’ said Mr Utamaro.
The grave voice.
Mr Applecheek turned to him abruptly. Skinny fingers clasping the black cotton of Mr Utamaro’s kimono, taut, feverish.
‘Haven’t I been saying just that to myself at every hour of the day since she was found? And condemned myself time and time again?’
His hand fell back. He gave a low moan.
‘You ought to have told the superintendent,’ Mr Utamaro said. ‘Why did you give yourself this torture? Surely you didn’t think that you could conceal your theft of the sword for ever?’
‘Don’t you know that that is what I did think?’ said Mr Applecheek.
‘Yes, I do know. The question was mostly rhetorical. But you deluded yourself.’
‘I deluded myself,’ said Mr Applecheek. ‘And I knew I was deluding myself. Was I succeeding i n tricking my own mind? I don’t know, I really don’t know.’
‘But now you have a chance of becoming of one mind,’ Mr Utamaro said.
‘My dear chap, I told you before. I am too old for it. Too old. You will have to let me go on in my stupid way, indulging in one little theft every three months or so until I go to
my grave. I’m altogether too tired to rise out of my past now.’
A hint of the old tone.
‘Now then,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘you saw me take the sword out of the cabinet when you climbed the cedar on Sunday evening?’
‘Yes.’
‘You climbed up there to look at the sword?’
‘I did.’
‘You came on the course with the idea of taking the sword in mind?’
‘Yes. And no.’
‘Naturally. You were of two minds. You told yourself you had a right to be interested in comparative religions. That you had time on your hands because the bishop wouldn’t give you any duties, and that this was as good a way of occupying yourself as any.’
‘Yes, you are quite right. The common pattern. You know it well.’
‘I know it from experience,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘And I know that it need not always be followed.’
‘No reform, no reform, I beg.’
Mr Applecheek lifted a hand in protest. A returning elaboration in gesture.
‘You also told yourself that even if the sword was on display at the course, as you had read in the newspapers that it would be, you had a right to look at it.’
‘Yes, I told myself that. Put it all in.’
‘You told yourself that you need not necessarily give way to temptation on this occasion and at the same time you told yourself that there was a pleasure in the very temptation and that it was a pleasure you could allow yourself because you had been hard done by life.’
‘The indictment. I plead guilty to it. To it all.’
‘So when you had seen me move the sword it was an easy matter to go up to my room when I was sitting in the dining room after dinner, playing with Mr Manvers’ tweeters – is that the word? – and take it.’
‘It was dreadfully easy.’
‘And you hid the sword. Where?’
‘Ah, you don’t know that?’
‘No.’
‘I hid it in the tree there. In a deep cleft in the trunk a short way up.’
‘Of course, someone mentioned there was a hole where the wood had gone rotten at the time Mrs Manvers climbed the tree.’
‘Yes, that was when I discovered it had gone. I didn’t at all know what was happening just then. I wondered about blackmail, about practical jokes, about anything but what turned out to be the truth.’
Mr Applecheek took Mr Utamaro’s arm again. The thin gnarled fingers fierce with conviction.
‘You don’t know how terrible it was,’ he said. ‘In my little world of private sin I was almost cosy. The regular round of temptation and fall, my petty thefts and the little escapades they brought about. My hairbreadth avoidances of exposure, such as that childish business with Miss Rohan’s ring. They were all somehow familiar, warm, usual. And into that little world came that silly poor girl and the person who wanted to kill her. And I helped.’
‘If you are going to see the world the right way round you must succumb to even more terrible shocks,’ said Mr Utamaro.
‘I am too old. I am too old. Can’t you understand that? I am too old to change. That is why I took Miss Rohan’s ring. It was a little bit of comfort for me. While it was happening I forgot that the sword had been stolen from me for what purpose I dared not think. Don’t you see that?’
A deep flush blotchily staining the old man’s parchment cheeks. His voice uncontrolled, harsh.
‘And then your attitude when I surprised you from behind the tree just now,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘I said to myself “He is incorrigible” though, of course, I used the word loosely, as is the way of the world. You know that there is no such thing as incorrigibility.’
‘I know no such thing.’
A renewed spark from the dying fire.
‘We shall see. Now, can you tell about what time the sword must have been taken from the hiding place you had put it into?’
‘No.’
Sudden vehemence.
‘You mean that you will not tell me?’
‘Yes, I mean that. Please don’t ask me.’
Mr Utamaro remained silent for a little.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that the time the sword was taken out of the tree indicates to you the person who took it.’
‘My responsibility in the matter has ceased,’ said Mr Applecheek.
The bony jaw set obstinately.
‘You will tell me,’ said Mr Utamaro.
‘No.’
‘Yes. Not for the sake of what you have to say but for your own sake.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘One day,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘when Hakuin presented his views to his master, Shoju, who was sitting on the veranda, the master simply said “Rubbish.” Hakuin went on speaking and Shoju caught hold of him, hit him about the head and pushed him off the balcony. When Hakuin had recovered from his fall, he went and bowed to the master. Shoju said: “You cave-dwelling beast.” Next day Hakuin came to Shoju again and when he had exhausted himself the master pushed him out of the window so that he was knocked senseless. Hakuin came back and bowed to Shoju who again called him a cave-dwelling animal. But a little later when Hakuin was going about his business a certain trivial occurrence opened his eyes to the truth of Zen. He hurried back to the monastery. The master saw him entering the gate and called him over. Hakuin told him of his experience and Shoju tenderly stroked him and said: “You have it at last.”’
‘I don’t care,’ said Mr Applecheek. ‘No doubt Hakuin was a younger man. I am too old to be knocked senseless.’
‘You are so near,’ said Mr Utamaro.
He leant towards the old clergyman, sweat glistening on his forehead.
‘One more fall from the window,’ he said. ‘One more and it will perhaps be enough.’
Mr Applecheek stood up. His hands pushing his awkward body up from the stone seat.
‘Goodbye,’ he said.’ I am going. I am going to read the paper.’
Mr Utamaro got up and walked beside him. Slowly across the sun dappled lawn.
‘Then if you won’t tell me, I shall have to tell you,’ he said.
‘Do what you like,’ said Mr Applecheek. ‘But I very much doubt if you can tell me who took that sword from the tree.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘you have made me certain already that the sword must have stayed in the tree all night. Anyone could have come and taken it during the hours of darkness, so if it had gone by the morning you would not now know who had taken it.’
Mr Applecheek said nothing. Painful steps across the lawn and round into the house.
‘And equally,’ Mr Utamaro went on, ‘the first part of the morning when everybody was going about their own affairs here and there would not provide the right conditions. Then at nine o’clock everyone was in the meditation hall where I set you the koan “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” So no one was in a position to relieve you of your prize then.’
At the word ‘prize’ Mr Applecheek groaned quietly but he made no other comment.
‘A little after nine yesterday morning,’ Mr Utamaro continued, ‘Mr Stuart came to see me and I went back with him and found you all still assembled.’
‘How do you know someone didn’t leave us while you were talking to Stuart?’ said Mr Applecheek.
A jet of malice.
‘But they did not,’ said Mr Utamaro.
‘No, they didn’t’
‘There is a certain impressiveness about the meditation ritual. One does not wander away from it. So that brings us to my sanzen interview with you. After it you told me that it was time you went and read the paper. You said you needed the comfort. So that was when you went and made sure the sword was still in its place.’
‘All this is as nothing to me.’
Petulance.
‘And then at ten o’clock – you see I am firmly under the sway of Major Francis and his timetable although I carry no watch – and then at ten I gave my lecture on flower arrangement. At which you were present and of thos
e we are considering only Miss Rohan was absent. I do not think we need go any further. It was shortly after that that Mrs Manvers climbed the tree and you found out the sword was no longer there.’
‘I hope you feel happier for what you have discovered,’ said Mr Applecheek. ‘Miss Rohan seems to me to be a lady of a sort one seldom finds nowadays and that girl seemed to be quite worthless. I am not willing to judge between them. I hope you will find it easier.’
He walked off along the corridor towards the common room. Hasty, ungainly steps. Mr Utamaro looked at him until the door of the common room closed. With a testy jerk.
Then he sat quietly down cross-legged on the floor underneath the notice board – Major Francis, Warden, will be on annual leave – and bowed his head in thought.
He did not appear to hear Superintendent Padbourne walking quietly out of the warden’s office and along into the hall. The superintendent saw him at once. He looked down at the squatting figure in the black kimono, head bowed, body relaxed and without movement.
The piggy eyes looked upwards briefly, in despair.
Superintendent Padbourne put his hand to his mouth and coughed. Briskly.
Mr Utamaro looked up.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ said the superintendent.
Mr Utamaro got to his feet. In a single movement, without fuss.
‘Yes, indeed, superintendent,’ he said. ‘I was thinking over a conversation I had just been having. I’m afraid I sat there without realizing what I was doing. I try in Europe to use chairs for sitting on, but when I am preoccupied I forget.’
‘It must be difficult, sir,’ said Superintendent Padbourne.
A duty done.
‘I was looking for you as a matter of fact,’ he went on. ‘I want a few words with you if I may.’
‘Certainly, superintendent.’
Mr Utamaro looked at him with calm appraisal.
‘Would you care to accompany me back to the warden’s office? We shall be in private there.’
A touch of sharpness.
‘Certainly,’ said Mr Utamaro.
He followed the superintendent along the corridor, past the closed common room door and into the warden’s office.
The former butler’s pantry. A small room lined with deep shelves smooth from much use. They had been divided by Major Francis into pigeon holes and in each hole there was a small pile of papers. Sterile eggs. Where the walls of the room were clear of shelves notices, graphs, and examples of semiofficial publicity were pinned cheek by jowl. On the small table which served as a desk there was a telephone, an ‘in’ tray, an ‘out’ tray and a ‘pending’ tray – all empty – a diary and a movable calendar.
Zen there was Murder Page 14