The Assize of the Dying Read online

  ‘Records of Helen,’ said Gerard, with a vengeful smile. ‘Do you hear? He can never have enough of her.’

  He crossed the hearth and stood over his wife, who sat staring up at him with a bleak and open hostility he had never seen in her face before. ‘Estelle, I don’t ask what has passed between you and him. Oh, for God’s sake don’t try to deny that there’s been anything. Do you think I’m stone blind? I only say, let it end here – let it end now! Don’t push me any further, and I’ll forget this ever happened. But if you persist in humiliating yourself and me—’

  Was her failure to be read as clearly as that in her face? Her stunned pride rose flaming into life again; she glared up at her husband, and forced her rigid countenance to do the impossible. She looked him full in the eyes, and laughed.

  ‘Are you so very sure of yourself, Gerard? Do you really think I’m as incompetent as all that? Don’t you think he was rather a long time finding that book for me tonight? Does it take as long as that to say no, do you suppose?’

  His heavy face hung over her still smiling with vengeful disbelief, and yet already mottled purple with doubt and fear and fury. ‘You were there in the room with him! No! I don’t believe it – it’s impossible!’

  ‘He was wiping my lipstick from his lips,’ she said, laughing softly, ‘as he came down the stairs. Didn’t you notice? I thought you noticed everything! Yes, I was with him, there in the room! We made good use of the time – do you want me to go into details?’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said, panting. ‘He can’t even see anyone but her – he has no use for you – I saw it in your face when you came down—’

  ‘Can you see it there now?’ And she turned her beautiful, laughing, flushed face to the light, and her violet eyes glittered like amethysts with feverish triumph. ‘Oh, we can both act a little when it seems expedient! Only I’m sick of expediency, it’s no longer worth the effort – not for all your money, my dear! Yes, I was with him! Yes, I’ll go to him again, whenever I please! Are you satisfied now?’

  She sprang out of her chair, and pushed her way past him towards the staircase, feeling her enforced complacency beginning to shatter in rage and pain. He caught her by the arm, blindly, blunderingly, as she passed by, and swung her round to face him. With astonishment and contempt she saw tears in his eyes.

  ‘I won’t let you do this! I’ll kill you first, and him, too! You’re my wife! If you betray me, I’ll kill you! Let him alone! From now on, let him alone, I warn you – I warn you!’ His voice was thick and broken, as though he had suffered a stroke.

  She knew it was time to be a little afraid, but she was so full of bitterness that there was no room for fear. She wrenched herself free, and flung away from him.

  ‘I’ll do as I please! You mean nothing to me – do you hear? – nothing! I’m sick and tired of pretending you do.’

  She ran up the stairs, and he saw her hesitate for a long moment outside the closed door of Philip’s room. Then she ran on, and vanished into the corridor beyond.

  Gerard slumped down with his misery into the chair she had vacated, and sat motionless for a long time. When he did move, it was only to pour himself a stiff drink, and swallow it quickly, and follow it up with another. The level in the decanter went down rapidly. If he could not drown his grief perhaps he could deaden it a little, in time. When he heard Bill’s footsteps on the flags outside the french window, he dragged himself hurriedly to his feet, and stumbled clumsily but quietly up the stairs.

  Bill, coming in from the garden, found the room empty, and there was nothing for him to do but lock up, put out the lights, and follow the rest of the household to bed. He made his rounds dutifully, but at the last moment he stood for a long time in miserable indecision outside Philip’s door. Should he go in? Should he make one more attempt to talk to his uncle? Could he keep his temper this time? And would it do any good, even if he did?

  Softly and clearly within the room rose the voice of Helen, singing again, on a record now three years old: ‘Es ist vollbracht.’ ‘The end is come – the pain is over—’

  ‘What’s the good!’ thought Bill, wretchedly. ‘If I go in there and interrupt him now he’ll only throw me out with a flea in my ear. No, it’s no use – not that way, at any rate!’ He looked down moodily at the coffee tray, and his hand cupped the rounded breast of the pot for a moment before he passed reluctantly on towards his own room, putting out the landing light after him.

  It was perhaps ten minutes later when Philip opened his door, and took in the tray.

  ‘Philip hasn’t come down yet,’ said Mary, coming in from the kitchen-garden as Bill was finishing a very late breakfast. ‘I wonder if I ought to wake him?’

  ‘I shouldn’t. I expect he’s been up half the night, working. Helen always leaves him to sleep it out. Aren’t the Renauds down yet, either?’

  ‘He is – he finished breakfast long before you put in an appearance – not that he ate much, I must say – and he went out for a walk. I expect he didn’t want to disturb his wife yet. But Philip will be annoyed if I let him sleep on, and he isn’t up to welcome Helen home when she comes.’

  ‘Well, if you wake him about the time I start for the station, that’ll give him time to be up and waiting for her when we get back.’

  It happened, therefore, that Mary, carrying a cup of tea, entered Philip’s bedroom perhaps thirty seconds before Bill took the key of the garage from its hook in the kitchen, and walked out to fetch the car. So he was still just within earshot when the cup shattered on the edge of the bedside table, and the small, hoarse, unbelieving cry quavered out after the crash, not a loud cry, but so out of place in this sunny morning as to be inexpressibly shocking. His foot was on the doorstep when he heard it; he jumped round in haste, and ran back through the hall.

  Mary came across the landing in a stiff, dazed, hurrying walk, her hand at her mouth, her eyes blank with horror. She looked through her nephew, as he came bounding up towards her, and gave no sign of seeing him, until he took her by the shoulders abruptly, and shook her.

  ‘What’s wrong? Aunt Mary, what is it? What happened?’

  The alarm and concern in his voice seemed to reach her. She started in his arms, and blinked dazedly into his face. She began to shake between his hands as he held her.

  ‘Bill, something’s happened to Philip! He won’t wake up! I touched him – he’s cold – Bill, I think he’s dead!’

  Chapter 2

  Bill knelt down by Philip’s bed, and held the mirror from the dressing-table to the half-open lips, but it remained clear of any hopeful trace of mist. He touched the grey forehead, smoothed now of the troubling lines of thought, and drew back his fingers with a shiver from the coldness of the skin. Philip lay on his back, his face uplifted to the morning light, his arms relaxed and easy in the folds of the sheets. He looked young, and aloof, and ironical, wearing still the half-smile with which he had fallen asleep.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Mary asked in a whisper. But she knew, she had known from the first moment. Never could Philip have looked like that alive, whether waking or asleep.

  Bill said: ‘Yes.’ The word was almost inaudible, as though shock had done something to his vocal cords. He cleared his throat laboriously, and slowly stood up. In the act he accomplished several stages of the transition into manhood, though all he understood of it was that the weight of events had suddenly come down upon his shoulders, and that instinctively he braced himself to receive the load. There was no time to avoid it, no opportunity to deflect it on to somebody else. There was nobody else, except Mary, and she was hovering at his back, still half-stunned with shock, and surprisingly helpless when confronted with the unforeseen, she whose daily routine ran on well-regulated tracks, like a train.

  ‘But it isn’t possible! How could he die? Why should he? There was nothing the matter with him. His heart was sound as a bell. People don’t just die in the night for no reason—’

  ‘I don’t know, Aunt Mary, I don’t
know any more than you do. We shall have to call Dr Benson.’ He had to make an intense effort to remember the steps which had to be taken after a sudden death, but this at least was certain, and urgent. The doctor who had been in attendance in the household must be called in at once, and he would give a death certificate. Or, of course, refuse one! There might have to be an inquest! Indeed, now that he had thought of that possibility, he saw that it was very likely in these circumstances. But only Dr Benson could decide. He took Mary by the arm, very gently, and led her out of the room and into Philip’s study next door, and put her into a chair. The stunned and motionless look was still on her face, and her hands, when he took them in his, were stiff and cold.

  ‘Darling, I’m going to get you a drink, whether you like the stuff or not. Don’t try to think, or move, or do anything yet – you’ve had a bad shock. Just sit here till I come back, I’ll see to everything.’

  Perhaps it was the wrong treatment. Perhaps he was taking away from Mary, by thus assuming responsibility, the very thing she most needed, the necessity of coping with events. But she looked so helpless and witless that he couldn’t spare time to rouse her yet, he would have to get on with it himself. There was the doctor, first of all – and what followed would depend on him. And there was Helen’s train, drawing steadily nearer to the station, and no one to meet her. He couldn’t possibly leave here now. Renaud might quite well be asked to meet the train, but Renaud was out walking somewhere, and Bill didn’t know where, and hadn’t time to hunt for him. Perhaps the rector would go. Helen – Helen—At the thought of her his emotions, which had been in a state of suspended animation since the terrible thing happened, started into vehement and painful life again. Poor Helen, he thought wildly, poor Philip, the two figures moving in and out in a tragic dance in his mind. He couldn’t bear the thought of the rector breaking the news to her. But who else was there? And it was unthinkable that she should be left unmet, wondering what had happened, driving in anxiously by taxi to find her husband dead and her household in chaos.

  Dr Benson answered the telephone from his surgery. Bill poured out the naked facts without finesse; there was no time for softening blows, especially for the benefit of this tough old professional, even if he had known Philip for fifteen years and been in a very real measure his friend.

  ‘Can you come over as soon as possible? Don’t leave anyone who really needs you, because there isn’t anything you can do for Uncle Philip – but do come as soon as you can. He’s dead! He didn’t come down this morning, and Aunt Mary went up to wake him, and found him dead in bed. He looks as if he was quite fast asleep when he died, and never knew anything about it. No, we haven’t touched anything. No, there’s no doubt at all. He’s cold—!’ Bill heard his own voice split in two, and gulped down determinedly the constriction in his throat. ‘Mary might need a sedative – she’s badly shaken. I’m going to dope her with brandy.’

  ‘Don’t overdo it,’ said Dr Benson briefly. ‘I’ll be there inside ten minutes.’

  Bill pushed down the receiver rest for a moment, and dialled the rectory number. He still didn’t like the idea, but he had no choice; and Helen, after all, in her charitable innocence, had the best of opinions of the rector, without any of the slight reservations the rest of the household felt about him. Tact without warmth seemed to Bill an offence, but it might have its uses. He braced himself to meet the inevitable condolences as gracefully as he could.

  But it was not the rector who answered, it was Rachel Pharamond. Bill had never expected to feel such relief at the sound of that fresh, incisive young voice.

  ‘Oh, Rachel, thank God it’s you! Will you do us a great favour? It’s frightfully urgent. I was to have met Helen’s train at ten, and now something ghastly has happened, and I can’t leave here, and she mustn’t, simply mustn’t, be left to come home alone and find out what’s happened without any warning. It’s Philip – we found him dead in bed, ten minutes ago. The doctor’s on his way over now.’

  ‘Wait a minute – it must be the line – I thought you said Philip was dead—!’

  ‘He is! Aunt Mary found him. He must have died in his sleep. I know—! We can’t believe in it, either. But there isn’t any doubt about it.’

  ‘Philip!’ said Rachel, on a great, exhaled breath. ‘Oh, God, Bill, I’m so sorry! I liked him so much! Yes, I’ll go for Helen, of course! There’s time – I’ll be there before the train gets in, don’t worry.’

  How prompt she was in decisions, and how blessedly brief in giving voice to sympathy! She almost rang off before he could call her back in sudden agitation: ‘Rachel – don’t tell her he’s dead! Please! If you could just prepare her a little – say I rang up and asked you to come – say there’s something wrong, and I couldn’t come myself, but don’t – I’d rather—’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Rachel. ‘You shall break the news to her yourself. I’m just a stand-in for the journey. Good-bye, Bill!’

  She was gone. He was amazed at the feeling of gratitude he had for her directness, and the absolute reliance he found himself placing in her. He went back at once to Mary, and coaxed and compelled her into swallowing the brandy he had brought for her. It quickened colour in her cheeks again, and made her shudder and grimace, which at least was better than that blank, fixed look of shock. She began to look round uneasily, convinced that in this or any crisis she ought to be hard at work, doing with competence whatever had to be done.

  ‘Dr Benson’s on his way. There’s nothing we can do until he comes, except perhaps tell the Renauds what’s happened.’

  ‘And there’s poor Helen just coming home – Oh dear, we’d forgotten her! How can we tell her? They adored each other so! And there’s nobody to meet her, even!’ Mary’s tears brimmed over, and whether they were for Helen or for Philip was something Bill could not guess. He put his arm round her shoulders rallyingly, and hugged her for a moment, applying a technique of comfort which had gone out with his childhood, but might have its uses yet.

  ‘It’s all right, Aunt Mary, there’ll be somebody to meet her. Rachel is going. I just telephoned her. Won’t you go down now, and take care of Mrs Renaud, if she’s put in an appearance? Things have got to go on, you know, for Helen’s sake – for all our sakes. I’ll stay here with Uncle Philip till the doctor comes.’

  ‘Poor Bill,’ said Mary, wiping her eyes, ‘it’s just as awful for you. It’s as if the ground had opened under the house. He was so very alive!’

  She rose, however, with some of her old briskness, and looking round with eyes still slightly dazed, observed the evidences of her brother’s last preoccupations. On his desk the unfinished proof was pushed aside to make room for a pile of gramophone records, and the player still stood open on its cabinet. Beside the records, on a corner of the desk, lay the coffee tray, the bottom of the single cup dark with grounds.

  ‘I may as well take that down, I suppose,’ she said sadly, and stretched out her hands to pick it up. Bill checked her with a hand on her arm, hardly yet realising himself the significance of what he did.

  ‘No, leave it. We ought not to touch anything yet. We don’t know—’

  He stopped, his eyes suddenly fixed in appalled remembrance on the black ceramic pot. He heard Philip’s thoughtful, dispassionate voice lecturing on the psychology of successful murder, saying with deliberation: ‘All you need to kill efficiently is patience, placidity, and the ability to observe accurately.’ Bill felt sick, and recognised with humiliation that he was horribly frightened. This death was altogether too apt. Had there been among Philip’s audience one pupil willing to learn the technique literally? Somebody – was it Renaud? – had put the exact case as an instance. ‘Say I wanted to murder you – how would I set about it?’ And Philip had told them, in so many words, leaning forward to impale himself on the knife he himself had sharpened and handed to his murderer. Every victim of murder, he had said, is to some extent a suicide.

  It isn’t true, Bill told himself frantically, shaki
ng the nightmare remembrance away from him. There’ll be something quite prosaic, something we ought to have known about, something he should have been worrying about, an enlarged heart, an aneurism, something natural. The doctor will know. It’s just one effect of shock, this running to invent trouble. Snap out of it. There was coffee in the pot, and that was all!

  It was at that moment that they heard Dr Benson’s feet stumping up the stairs. He would have left his car by the farm-gate, as usual, and come across the field and the bridge into the garden, letting himself in unannounced, as he always did. He had been in and out of the house so often in attendance on Helen that no ceremony ever attached to his visits. Mary hurried to meet him on the landing, and he gave her merely an abstracted pat on the shoulder and a jerk of his head backward down the stairs.

  ‘One of your guests just came in from the lane, Mary. I’d go and keep him occupied for a while, if I were you. This is a bad business, we’d better know a bit more about it before we make it public property.’

  She went down at once, grateful to have something definite to do again, now that she had so far recovered herself as to feel the want of action. Bill led the doctor into Philip’s room, and stood back, watching with strained attention, as he made his rapid and careful examination. Neither of them said a word throughout this process. Bill fixed his eyes upon Philip’s leaden face, with its ironical half-smile already smoothing out into a grand and humbling indifference, and waited with a thumping heart for the verdict. At length the doctor drew up the sheet over the dead man’s face, and turned and looked at Bill for a long moment in silence.

  ‘Well?’ said Bill in a hoarse whisper, when he could no longer bear the waiting.

  ‘It isn’t well, Bill, my boy! It’s far from well! I went over Philip about six months ago, when he’d been overdoing it badly, and I know he was fundamentally sound – heart, lungs, everything. Just run-down from overwork, but at bottom as strong as an ox. Healthy people like Philip don’t go out overnight, like this. I’m sorry, Bill, but I can’t give a certificate. I’m really very sorry, but where a death doesn’t make sense it’s my duty to pass on the job to the coroner. You understand what that means?’