The Assize of the Dying Page 10

  I think that is how Zoë came to die. He told me so, and since he was asking nothing of me, neither silence nor help, I see no reason to disbelieve what he said.

  It seems there has never been a time when Charlie was not in debt. He lived an expensive life, and had some exacting friends. That I should know nothing of his difficulties is not so surprising as it may seem; he would no more have thought of coming to me for money than to a stranger in the street. It was his part to get what he needed by his own initiative. There may have been some questionable transactions earlier, but certainly at the time when he met Zoë Trevor again after a long estrangement he was deep in debt and being pressed for settlement by some dangerous friends. You may know that after his demobilisation he had been one of the procession of Zoë’s young admirers. I knew it myself, but did not suppose, nor indeed did he, that he had been more important in that company than any of the others. It was he who had been the first to abandon the association, but since Zoë was no more real to him than the rest of us, except in glimpses, it had not occurred to him that she might have suffered by his defection.

  When by chance they were thrown together again, she showed that she was willing to renew the acquaintance on the old terms. He says freely that when he consented to go to her house that night, he went to rob her. She was notoriously casual with her money; there were often large untraceable sums in the house, apart from valuables. If he had asked her for a loan to tide him over his difficulties, she would probably have given it to him – you remember the little debts of Louis Stevenson? – but Charlie never asked for things. It was outside his code. He intended to take, and she had then the remedy of setting the police on him if she chose. Watching her and wondering whether she would do so would probably have afforded him a kind of stimulation which he constantly needed. But what he does say is that he did not, at that time, intend to kill her.

  When he went in to her, he says, he had a shock. She had made every effort to turn back time for him, to leap back across the six years during which they had hardly met. She wore the dress she had often worn for him then. They dined together, and his uneasiness became intense, because her pleasure in him was distressing to that unwillingness he had to be touched, to have other people’s delight and pain encroach upon his singleness. At his suggestion they washed-up afterwards, and she cleared everything away, thus eliminating most of the traces of his visit. Then they went into the room where she was afterwards found dead. She was lying upon the settee, and he – it was expected of him – sat down beside her and embraced her.

  In the kiss he suffered one of those moments of enlightenment, and she became a person. He says that he felt her love for him pass into his mind like fire. It had not occurred to him that Zoë could love. She told him that he was her life, and without him she had been in a kind of death which did not preclude suffering. He says that he knew it was true, and that her joy was more than he could bear. He foresaw in his heart her situation when she found that he had been making a fool of her, and had come not because he loved her, but because he needed her money. What was he to do? He could not rob her and abandon her to such a terrible disillusionment, but neither could he satisfy her by loving her, for he loved no one but himself. Nor was he prepared to withdraw from the situation and abandon his purpose, which would now neither serve him nor preserve her. He says that he could see no way out but to bestow on her one moment at least of triumph and happiness, and destroy her at the height of it. It seemed to him the lesser cruelty.

  And that is why he killed her, and killed her as he did. When she was dead, he erased the remaining traces of his presence, took all the money and jewellery he could find in the house, and left. With the money he paid off the most pressing of his debts, and he has since disposed of three small pieces of jewellery, but the rest will in due course be restored intact to Zoë’s heirs.

  On leaving the theatre at which he spent the later part of that evening, he was robbed, somewhere in the street, of two small items. But of this incident you know already.

  Having told me this story, Charlie agreed with me quite simply that he had lost the game and his life was forfeit, and of course he did not ask me to take any other view. He asked for nothing; that was not his habit. He told me that he would make his own exit in his own way, but promised not to delay it beyond tonight. This bargain, to which I had no right to agree, I nevertheless accepted. He has kept his part of it; but I do not think he realised that I meant to go with him. I do so, not entirely because my own honour is also at stake, and my own life forfeit, but chiefly because I wish to accompany my son to whatever further experience may be waiting for him. And if there is nothing further, I prefer to end with him.

  I had thought to leave behind me his own statement of his motives and actions, but he refused to go to so much trouble, saying that he was content to leave the reporting to me, because I should be scrupulously just to everybody. He says too, though on this point he may be deluding himself, that he had not reconciled himself to letting Stevenson die in his place, and, but for the decision of that unfortunate man to shorten the ordeal, he would have made some attempt to extricate him from his unhappy situation. I have said, I do not know how much value to attach to this expressed intention; but I do believe that he himself believed it to be true, for he had no possible motive for lying to me.

  Lastly, Margaret, I am exercised in mind at the thought of what will follow my death; and though I see no way of convincing the world, I beg you, at least, most solemnly to accept my assurance that we have none of us been hounded to our deaths by the sick fancies of a much-wronged man. We are the victims of no one but ourselves. It is our own actions, not the curses of others, which pursue us. The Assize of the Dying has its court in the mind, and we are our own accusers.

  I hope that you will forgive me soon, and in the course of time forget, if not me, at least the discourtesy of my abrupt departure. My warmest good wishes remain with you for the future.

  Your affectionate uncle,

  JOHN MANTON.

  She folded the precise sheets carefully, and put them back into the envelope. Suddenly she could not see the laborious movements of her own hands for the dazzle of tears, and Malachi, observing their lame fumblings, took the letter from her and lifted her impetuously into his arms.

  ‘We’ll never touch the jewellery, you needn’t even see it! We’ll sell the wretched stuff, and give the money away. We’ll sell up the house in Hampstead, and get out of here for good. In Canada you’ll soon forget all this. It’s done and done with, you won’t be able to remember it there. That’s another country, Margaret, and another life. You’ll like it – I’ll make you happy—’

  She was dazed with weariness and tension, and, held fast in his arms, clinging to him gratefully, she let her senses drown in the sound of his voice whispering passionate reassurances against her cheek. So she never heard the other door of the study open, and the slow procession of footsteps pass along the landing to the stairs, as the stretcher-men carried Mr Justice Manton away.

  AUNT HELEN

  Chapter 1

  It was turning out exactly like all the other abortive attempts to get Uncle Philip to see reason. He should have known better than to expect anything else. It had begun with a kind of forbearing tolerance, and was ending in anger. He stood with his shoulder turned on the older man, and stared hard out of the window at the delectable Easter greens of Helen’s garden, and the greenish silvery curve of the river bearing round towards the mill-wheel, but what he was seeing was the dwindling week of grace Lawson had allowed him in which to raise his share of the capital, and the priceless opportunity, slippery as silk and delicate as glass, falling through his impotent fingers for ever. He was being treated like an irresponsible child, though it was the whole course of his life that was at stake. He knew what he was about, he was as good a judge of a speculation as Philip, any day. He was twenty-two, and it was his money, and he wanted and needed it now, not in three years’ time, and it was damned unfai
r that Philip should be able to prevent him from handling it.

  He said as much, the words bursting out of his lips furiously: ‘I’m not a child! I’m twenty-two!’

  ‘I’m glad you reminded me, boyo,’ said Philip, in that aggravatingly sweet and buoyant voice of his, ‘before I forgot myself, and took action that wouldn’t sort at all with the dignity of your years. And if I were you I’d be off now, before the exact figure slips my mind again. It’s the tantrums that take me back – first time bad luck ever dumped you in my lap you were purple in the face with temper – just like you are now!’

  Bill Grant was startled into flashing one indignant glance towards the mirror that hung beside the window, and realised his folly and snatched his gaze away too late to avert the quiet chuckle with which his uncle scored up the point. He repeated doggedly: ‘I’m of age, and it’s my money.’

  ‘It’s your money, all right, and it’s my job to see that it’s still there for you when you’re twenty-five. And it’s going to be there, make no mistake about that.’

  ‘But this opportunity won’t be there, and you know it. I’ve told you over and over—’

  ‘You have, Bill, you have, I grant you that. It isn’t for want of hearing the facts I’m still saying no.’ Philip watched the boy’s sullen and desperate face impatiently, keeping the place in his half-corrected proof with a long forefinger. Two years of conscription did this sort of thing to even the best-balanced of young men, and he was willing to bear with the agonies of re-adjustment with a certain degree of philosophy, even with some sympathy. Not, however, to the extent of letting the young idiot ruin himself to line the pockets of a smooth character like this Lawson of his. ‘Your mother, bless her heart, must have had a premonition about you. Not that you’ll necessarily stop being a mug when you reach twenty-five, but one has to let go the strings some time. You can buy gold bricks on your twenty-fifth birthday, not before. The last thing I ever wanted was to act as trustee for anyone, let alone a pig-headed brat like you, but since I got the job whether I wanted it or not, by God, I’m going to do it properly. I don’t like your prospective partner, boyo, I don’t like his proposition, and I don’t like your chances of being solvent at twenty-three if I let you get your hands on your capital now. And that’s my last word.’

  ‘I believe you want to ruin my life!’ burst out Bill. ‘But I’ll get the money yet, in spite of you!’

  Philip’s incipient irritation was quite disarmed by this naïveté, and he broke into that sudden and impish smile which was as disconcerting on his grave face as laughter on the dark, disillusioned and sorrowful countenance of the Merry Monarch; whom, so he had often been told, he somewhat resembled. ‘Oh, come!’ he said reproachfully, ‘I could write you better lines than that, myself! But if that’s the level on which you want to play the scene, I can only come back with: Over my dead body!’

  ‘And that could be arranged, too!’ said Bill, flushed and scowling, and ready to say Anything to establish the extremity of his desperation. He had been trying all his life to impress Uncle Philip with his reality and stature as a person, and never succeeded yet, but he could not stop believing that he would manage it some day. The result, now as always, was disastrous. Philip’s handsome, shaggy, greying head went back delightedly, and he shouted with laughter, snatching his finger out of the proof, and pushing it skidding away across the desk.

  ‘Oh, Bill, Bill, my soul, you make me feel young again! What are you proposing? – a duel? – or a cup of cold poison? You’d take care of Helen afterwards, wouldn’t you? Only don’t be too sure she’d let you have your own way about the money – you don’t know her as well as you think you do.’

  Bill wrenched himself away from the window and flung out of the room, scarlet to the forehead with shame at his own inadequacy and rage for his wrongs. When Philip stopped being angry and began to laugh he knew he was finished; there was nothing he could do now to get himself taken seriously. And those Renauds would be in the house all the week-end, and there would be precious few opportunities to get Philip alone again and try to make a better job of it. And he had only five days left to realise the money, if he wanted to go with Lawson to Canada. He slammed the door of Philip’s study behind him as a small sop to the fever of spite that filled him, and plunged down the stairs into the great hall of the millhouse, where the early evening shadows were lengthening. Mary was arranging some fresh flowers in a big silver bowl for the dinner-table. She gave him a quick glance as he passed her and went out into the garden, noted the flushed face and scowling brows, and the tremors of mortification that wrenched at his lips, and wisely made no attempt to stop or speak to him. He was on his way to Helen, of course. Whenever he felt like that – and there was no denying he was being a very difficult boy since he’d come out of the army – he always made a bee-line for Helen, and she always knew what to say to him.

  Helen was just coming over the pack-bridge which crossed the river at the end of the garden, and provided the quickest way to and from the village. The sound of the mill-race made a constant throbbing there, and the dark coppices closed in to the water, and coloured its fast, still depths olive-green. The huge, rough stones of the bridge, yellow with moss, had no parapets; by night it was better to go round, unless you knew the spot very well, but Helen always used this route, by daylight or darkness. No one knew it as she did. She had persuaded Philip to buy Hugonin’s Mill as a wedding present for her, and she had made it gradually into the lovely place it was now, practically with her own hands. Now it starred as the subject of articles in all the home-making magazines, and had been painted by more artists than Bill could remember. Wherever Helen put her gentle fingerprint on a place or a person, it became the mark of quality and grace. Bill hoped humbly that some day people would be able to recognise even in him that he was Helen’s work.

  She was forty-five, but she still looked less than thirty, slender as a girl, and fair as a yellow rose. Her beauty was the lasting kind, because so much of it was invisible to the eye but only implied, in the tenderness of the dreaming mouth and the soft attentiveness of her glance, in the unfailing tranquillity of her movements and the beautiful repose of her stillness. She had brought him up from the age of seven, when she married his uncle and guardian, and he was still astonished and grateful every time he saw her afresh after half an hour’s absence. A good thing for the child, people had said fervently – and unwisely they had said it all too often in the child’s sharp and intelligent hearing – when Helen took over both the uncle and the nephew, otherwise who knew how the boy might have turned out under Philip Greville’s unregenerate influence? But with Helen any child was safe. And any man, too, it seemed. The little pitcher with long ears had spent a great many hours of his childhood working out all the implications of the things he overheard, and he was well aware that according to the general opinion Helen had made a new and far better man of Philip. But he wasn’t as surprised as they seemed to be about that, because he lived with Helen, too, and he knew that loving her could change anyone.

  She let him take the shopping basket from her, and laid a cool finger against his still suffused cheek. He didn’t turn his face away from her; it was never necessary to hide anything from Helen.

  ‘You’ve been teasing Philip again! Silly child, I warned you he was involved with proofs and wanted to get them away. Which of you have I to be nice to this time?’

  ‘Me! He won, hands down. And I’m no forrarder!’ It was odd that he never minded being called a silly child by her, though he hated it when Philip so much as implied a want of years or sense in him. ‘Oh, Helen, do help me to make him see reason! He doesn’t listen to me, but he will to you. I’ve only got a few days left, and then I’m sunk. It’s the sort of chance that comes only once in a lifetime. If I miss it I can never hope for another.’

  She took his arm, and turned him gently to face her. ‘Darling, do you want so much to leave us?’

  ‘No, I – Yes, I suppose I do. But it isn’t like tha
t! I have to launch out for myself some time, haven’t I? I don’t want to leave you – how could I? – but some day I’ve got to. And I do want to set up for myself and manage my own life. Everybody wants that.’

  ‘And Philip wants it for you, Bill, believe me, he does. Only he distrusts this project, and doesn’t want you to go into it and then be disappointed.’

  ‘I shan’t be disappointed. I tell you, the thing’s all right, Lawson’s all right, Philip’s making a frightful mistake, and I’m the one who’s going to suffer for it. And it’s my money, I’ve a right to it, haven’t I? You’d let me have it, if it was in your hands, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, Bill, my dear, how can I say? I should want to know all about the thing before I gave in – for your sake, of course I should. And I’m not clever about business. I’m glad it’s Phil who has the decision, and not me.’

  ‘But you would give in,’ persisted Bill with certainty. ‘You wouldn’t be able to go on flatly saying no to me. You wouldn’t make me angry. I shouldn’t make a fool of myself with you. I always do with him.’

  She said with a quiet smile: ‘You make too much of it when you fall out with him. You’re far too alike to get on together very smoothly. Only promise me, darling, to leave him alone now, or you’ll only make things worse. He had a lot of work to finish – and now the Renauds coming for the week-end, and he’ll have to be sociable, too.’

  ‘But I can’t let it go at that,’ protested Bill, aghast. ‘I’ve got to try again. Unless you’d talk to him for me! Would you? Helen, would you? Helen, please!’ He shut his arms round her and hugged her, cajoling her as shamelessly as he had done at seven years old. ‘It’s terribly important to me, you don’t know how much it means. Oh, Helen, will you?’