The Assize of the Dying Read online

  ‘I don’t promise to ask him to do what you want. Remember that! But I promise I’ll talk it over with him, and try to advise him to let you have the money, if I think it justified – if I think it justified, I said. But only if you’re good, and let him alone, and make yourself useful with the guests tonight.’ She gasped and laughed, holding him off breathlessly. ‘Well, that’s a better face than you were wearing five minutes ago, at any rate. If you continue to improve, at least you’ll be fit to appear in company without frightening the Renauds out of the house. It shouldn’t be any hardship to be nice to the lady – she’s very beautiful.’

  Helen was the most outspoken of women in recognising beauty in others. Perhaps the reason she had always given him such a feeling of security was because she herself was so secure. Perversely, and on an impulse he instantly regretted bitterly, he said: ‘Mrs Renaud is an old flame of Philip’s – did you know?’

  Her laughter, as radiant as it was quiet, dispersed the sudden sense of shock he had felt at his own spurt of mischief. Of course she knew! Was there anything to be known about Philip that she didn’t know? And for the best of reasons, because Philip himself had no secrets from her.

  ‘What an unpleasantly knowing child you must have been,’ she said smiling, ‘before I took you in hand. There was a time when your uncle was virtually a mass of flames – yes, I know. You can’t expect that to surprise me – I found him attractive, too.’

  ‘Sorry, darling! You ought to box my ears when I say things like that. But I really did wonder why you invited them. I mean – well, I don’t suppose Renaud knows, and it could be a little awkward, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Actually, Estelle did the inviting practically single-handed. She made it so plain what she wanted that I was too feeble to pretend not to understand. But I don’t suppose there’ll be the slightest awkwardness. Why should there? It’s a very long time ago.’

  A very long time ago! Fifteen years of a fabulous marriage separated Helen from any shadow of anxiety on Estelle Renaud’s account, even supposing she had ever been capable of feeling such anxiety. And of course she never had.

  ‘They’ll be here in about half an hour,’ she said. ‘Come and help me to put my music ready for tomorrow night, then I shan’t have to bother about it later.’

  ‘And you won’t forget your promise?’ he asked, falling into step beside her, almost comforted.

  ‘Do I usually forget my promises?’

  Between the soup and the coffee a subtle change had taken place in Estelle’s thoughts and preoccupations at Helen’s table. At first she had been thinking, as she took stock of Philip’s spare profile by leisurely glances: ‘He looks his age!’ But by the end of the meal she was wondering: ‘Does he think I look mine?’ It was not that the affair had as yet any particular importance for her. It was rather that she felt a totally unexpected curiosity about this miraculous pairing, which had lasted fifteen years in the teeth of all probability, and looked, at least to outward view, proof against the ravages of fifteen more. The constancy of the naturally inconstant has always a perverse challenge about it, and Don Juan married is twice as attractive as Don Juan single. But can you be as curious as that about a person without risking a more dangerous kind of interest?

  He looked as she would have expected Philip to look after so long an interval, handsome and distinguished in his middle-aged domesticity, with an attractive frosting of grey in his thick hair, but brows and lashes as black as ever, and lean dark cheeks quick with tremors of sensibility still, signalling his private moments of amusement very clearly for one who knew the signs. Yes, he looked his age, but his age became him. And she? She was forty-seven. Did he still think her beautiful? She pushed the momentary hypocrisy away from her in disgust, for she knew perfectly well that she was beautiful, and that he was far too much of an artist not to appreciate her, however inconvenient she might be as a reminder of the past. She was tall and resplendent, and not afraid of her opulent colouring, her red-gold hair and violet eyes; and thinking back pleasurably to those old days when they had been together, she found herself his match still.

  They had sown wild oats lavishly in those days and it had not troubled her at all to be one of a joyous procession of women in his life, nor had she found his manner of scattering his talents at all wasteful, nor his wild reputation a reproach to her equally prodigal spirit. Strange how differently two women could look at the same man! She gazed thoughtfully at Helen across the table, marking the fair and delicate loveliness, the measured movements, the singular appropriateness of every word and every silence, every gesture and every stillness. This was the woman he’d gone so far as to marry. It was the first opportunity Estelle had ever had to observe her closely. This woman had transformed not only his state but his life. What had not troubled Estelle was anathema to her; she could not allow Philip to continue to throw his many gifts broadcast like largesse, making nothing of them, getting nothing out of them, burning himself out unprofitably. She had turned him into a model husband, faithful without question, industrious, disciplined, canalising his powers into the books which had made a name for him in the world – probably the most elegant and scholarly thrillers in the English language. Minor achievements, maybe, but very respectable achievements, all the same. He had a reputation in literary circles now. He had money, too, which was an asset not to be despised. Estelle knew all about that; she had married for money, once her early fling was over. Bohemianism for life was a luxury she could not afford.

  She looked at her husband, being attentive to Helen there on the opposite side of the table. Gerard was nearly sixty, and developing the heavy, dropping fleshiness of the sedentary business-man, the penalty of his capacity for making money; but she certainly couldn’t complain that he hadn’t kept his side of the bargain. There was more money than even she could ever spend. She had never tried to alter him, when she finally decided, seven years ago now, that it was time to settle down and turn her assets to lasting account. No, it took a different kind of arrogance from hers, to assume that you could take a man and make him over into a show-piece, just as easily as you could do the same efficient job on Hugonin’s Mill.

  And it might have worked, she thought, watching Gerard’s thick, pale neck crease as he bent over Helen, if he hadn’t been such a bore. Let’s face it, boredom starts more trouble than malice does. If he hadn’t been so dull I might never have invited the two of us down here for Easter; we should just have exchanged a few politenesses that evening we met so unexpectedly in the foyer of the theatre, and parted without leaving any loose ends. But I was spoiling for something to do, and there was Philip, and I just felt it would be a change. And perhaps I wanted to see if there was anything left that would blow up into a flame again – just to keep my hand in. And now I only want – Well, what do I want? I don’t know yet. I can’t be sure.

  ‘I’ve often heard you broadcast, Mrs Greville,’ Gerard was saying. ‘You gave a Schubert recital one night last autumn – I admired your singing of “Gretchen” very much.’

  ‘Oh, did you hear that? I don’t really sing Schubert well, I wasn’t altogether happy about it. I prefer singing Mozart, myself – maybe I need the greater discipline.’

  ‘Helen has a twenty-minute TV recital tomorrow night,’ said Philip proudly. ‘Her own loves this time – Mozart and Bach.’

  ‘I feel very guilty about abandoning you all for the day,’ said Helen, with her tender and brilliant smile, ‘but I can hardly back out of it. And it isn’t often they give me the chance to make up a whole programme of the items I like best. On Good Friday I can get away with it, you see.’

  ‘Your concerts during the year are distressingly few, though, if I may say so.’ Gerard could always talk music, it was one more of his interests which Estelle did not share. ‘We should like to hear much more of you.’

  ‘Helen has to be rather careful how much she undertakes,’ Philip explained for her. ‘She has a heart condition that keeps her from exerting herself too muc
h. And she finds broadcasting less demanding than concert appearances.’

  ‘Less tiring, at any rate,’ said Helen, with a deprecating frown and a quick smile in her husband’s direction. ‘No, don’t feel concerned about me, please, Mr Renaud. Phil is making too much of it. I’m not ill, you know, I’m just under supervision, and ordered to take things easy. And that suits my inclinations very well, as a matter of fact. This will be my first appearance on television, though; I’m quite looking forward to it. Personally, I’ve never thought that it was a medium very suited to song recitals, I must admit.’

  ‘In this particular case,’ said Gerard gallantly, ‘I must disagree. Both senses will share the same delight.’

  Heavy-handed, thought Estelle, a connoisseur of compliments. But quite in the character of this house. They all adore her. That dim elder sister of Phil’s, who used to hang around in the old day simply because of the baby – if you ask me, it’s because of Helen she hangs around now, she always disapproved of Philip, though I dare say the new model’s more to her taste than the old one. And the boy himself, it’s easy to see what he thinks of Auntie. Been in love with her, I should judge, since he was about ten, only luckily he’s much too simple to have the least notion what ails him. All he needs, when he fixes his eyes on her like that, is a lighted candle and a smell of incense. What he really needs, of course, is a girl. And Philip – Philip is a dead duck. He’s hers body and soul. Unless, of course – unless—

  It was at that moment that Philip let his hand rest for an instant upon the edge of the table between them, in the blue shadow of Mary’s bowl of flowers. Estelle put out her own still-beautiful hand to adjust a strand of fern which was trailing low, and in withdrawing it again let her palm brush the back of his hand, and her finger-tips pass over his knuckles in a caress as subtle as it was audacious. The antique garnet ring on her middle finger was one he had given her sixteen years ago. He had an excellent memory; it was not necessary to steal a glance at his still profile to be sure that he had recognised his gift, and assessed its implications here.

  Now she knew what she wanted. Her spirits rose buoyantly, she addressed her heart pleasurably to the fight.

  Dr Benson came in for coffee after dinner, as he often did when his evenings remained undisturbed by patients; a small, grey, dry man with shrewd eyes and a patiently sceptical smile. He always made a point of calling casually, upon some friendly pretext or other, whenever Helen was about to make the journey to London for a broadcast; nothing was said about professional matters, he simply observed the evidences of her health and spirits and, if he was satisfied, proffered no advice. This devoted watchfulness seemed to Bill no more than Helen’s due, but it was one more evidence of her beneficent power, and it always gave him pleasure.

  Then the rector came in through the french windows from the garden, for he was an intimate of the household at Hugonin’s Mill from some years back. A good-looking, middle-aged man with a face at once anxious and complacent, the double fruit, so Philip had once said, of an invalid wife and a fat living. Mrs Clive had made a previous marriage of disastrous memory with an artist by the beautiful name of Pharamond, and had never quite (said Philip again) been able to reconcile her relief at moving into the fold of sanctity with her secret nostalgia for the raffish society of her first match; so she had withdrawn from the insoluble problem into a yellow hypochondria. It wasn’t often her daughter put in an appearance in the village these days. The rarity of her duty visits to the rectory indicated that she had voted firmly for Bohemia; for she was well on the way to becoming a sculptress at twenty-one, and Pharamond’s daughter from head to foot. It was a surprise when she came in from the gathering darkness at her stepfather’s shoulder, and half-closed her large dark eyes against the gay lights of the hall like a cat.

  Rachel was the contradiction of everything Bill had ever admired or wanted in a woman. She entered the presence of acquaintances and strangers alike without a social smile, her clothes were not chosen to please anyone but herself, her young face with its spare flesh and resolute bones could have been a boy’s face, and the hands with which she accepted her coffee-cup were strong and square, with short, untinted finger-nails, workman’s hands. All the same, she had an assured physical distinction, her father’s legacy, and a quality of uncompromising thoughtfulness which was not to be confused with consideration. She was capable of saying the wrong thing after deliberation, but she was never likely to do so without thinking.

  ‘Canada!’ she said inevitably, when she heard the location of Gerard Renaud’s largest business interests. ‘Bill here is thinking of going into some mining project in your country, Mr Renaud. Unless he’s changed his plans since I was here last, that is.’

  ‘He hasn’t,’ said Philip promptly, ‘but it’s high time he did. Mining with Peter Lawson is out – definitely, finally out, I’ll see to that. Do you think you could induce him to realise it, Rachel? I’d be grateful – reiteration bores me.’

  Bill was aware of a momentary congestion of slightly embarrassed glances taking stock of him, and of his own suffused face, and hated Philip for an instant with all his heart, and Rachel hardly less. He opened his mouth to make an angry rejoinder, and felt Helen’s soft hand on his wrist, subduing him with a touch. She gave him a warning frown, and a quick, comforting smile, and deflected the battery of eyes back upon her husband.

  ‘Philip can’t bear having to talk or think about business in any shape or form. In any case, he’s hardly fit for human company when he has proofs to correct. I’m surprised he’s still with us,’ she said, meeting her husband’s eyes with a teasing smile. ‘It can’t be a social conscience, because he hasn’t one; it must be Mrs Renaud’s influence.’

  ‘Work,’ said Philip, ‘is for the middle of the night, when no beguiling company offers. There’s no other way of getting rid of proofs, in any case. I can sometimes write among distractions, but never, never correct proofs without being absolutely alone, and safe from anything that might deflect my attention. At that stage I always hate the thing so much that I’d make use of any pretext to leave it and forget it ever happened.’

  They received this pronouncement with indulgent smiles, no one believing him; no one except, perhaps, Rachel, who stood looking at him sombrely, with lowered brows, and underlip protruding dubiously. Philip was not smiling, either; but then, Philip never smiled at his own jokes.

  ‘Then why do you write them?’ asked Rachel quite bluntly.

  ‘It’s expected of me. And they earn money. I doubt if I’ve got time to learn another trade now in time to make a living at it.’

  ‘It must be awful,’ said Rachel, ‘to have to do work for which you haven’t any respect.’

  ‘Rachel!’ protested the rector gently, and hurried to cover the sudden gulf of embarrassment she had opened under their feet. ‘Every vocation seems to have these periods of losing its savour. Without reflection on the work one is actually doing at the time, too – it happens sometimes in a man’s most fruitful period. What is performed with most difficulty and pain, and least satisfaction, is often one’s best work in spite of its hard birth. But I should have thought in your line of country you might be immune – there’s such an intrinsic interest in mystery stories, such a challenge in working out a problem. I very much enjoyed your last book.’

  ‘Did you, Rector? How kind! I’d never thought of you as a reader of murder mysteries.’

  ‘Murder?’ said Gerard, suddenly raising his eyes from the garnet ring on his wife’s hand to Philip’s saturnine face. ‘That’s what you deal in, is it?’

  It seemed a strange subject in which to take refuge from stresses which were beginning to set all their nerves on edge; and yet at the time it appeared so remote from them all that they could afford to be detached about it. Especially Philip, whose curious stock-in-trade it was. Among so many dangerous personal relationships, this surely provided ground on which they could meet in a discussion so academic that it need disturb none of them. Bill cou
ld dissemble the frustration of which he had just been roughly reminded, Estelle could recover from her momentary contortion of rage at the placidity with which Helen seemed to dismiss any possibility of rivalry between them, Gerard could memorise the antique outlines of the garnet ring he had never seen on his wife’s hand until now, and ponder its origin silently, while they all talked about murder.

  In the event it was Philip who did most of the talking.

  ‘Murders are committed so easily on paper,’ Gerard said sceptically, ‘but in real life they seem to me to provide a lot of practical difficulties.’

  ‘Do you think so? The difficulties often seem to me to be more apparent than real. Every man carries about with him the possibility of his own destruction; it’s only necessary to know him well enough, to know the habits of his mind and the ruts of his routine, in order to kill him. Of course, if you haven’t the patience to study the ground thoroughly you’ll come to grief, but if you really take the trouble to know your subject he’ll point out the chinks in his armour himself sooner or later. In every life there’s some foible, or prejudice, or weakness, through which the careful finger of hate can penetrate. Men make their own deaths – even their own murders. Every man provides the occasion and the weapon, even if for most of us there happens to be no enemy at hand to make use of them.’

  ‘You are relieving man of his responsibility for his acts,’ protested the rector, bridling like a woman now that Philip had set a deliberate foot on his own professional territory.

  ‘No,’ said Rachel instantly, ‘he’s only pointing out that responsibility is never a single or a simple matter.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand you,’ said Gerard, looking up at Philip steadily through his thick lenses. ‘Say, for instance, that I had some motive for wanting to murder you – how would I set about it, supposing I had the patience and the time to do it your way?’