Let Him Lie (22 page)

“No. I didn't want her to go, you see. We argued and quarrelled about it for weeks. And then suddenly, without telling me she was going, she went. If she had to go, I was glad it was that way. And I didn't want letters from her. I hate sentiment and letter-writing and all that stuff. I like to go straight on from one thing to another. Like Mr. Fone's straight tracks that don't curve nor go back themselves. And she was the same. Still, I'd like to see her again, now I've got over her leaving me like that. There's Mr. Johnson just come in at the gate.”

When she saw Peter's radiant face Jeanie was tempted to put Finister's warning and all thoughts of Molyneux's death out of her mind, and throw herself with Peter into the game of old-straight-track hunting.

“Jeanie, there's a ford at Whitley. And if you stand at the ford and look at the clump on Lady Hill, you look right over Whitley Church. Isn't that thrilling, eh?”

“Is it, Peter?”

“Scientifically thrilling, Jeanie. It's an old straight track. The Neolithic people used to walk along it.”

“What, over Whitley Church?”

Peter looked a little pained.

“Jeanie, Jeanie, think again. The church may be an ancient specimen of masonry, but it's not Neolithic. They didn't walk over it, because it wasn't there.”

“Then how do you know where they walked?”

“All Christian churches,” said Peter, with the sweeping dogmatism of one who has just adopted a new theory, “are built on the sites of pagan churches, and all pagan churches were built on the sites of Neolithic temples.”

“Ah!”

“Yes. Ah!”

“And the Neolithic people always took their Sunday walks past the temple, naturally. I get you, Peter. But then, why on a hot Sunday afternoon, did they struggle up to the clump on Lady Hill?”

“To get to Droitwich.”

“Droitwich?”

“Salt, you know. It's probably a salt-track.”

“A salt-track?”

“The track which brought the salt to this part of the country from Droitwich. Salt's very important to primitive people. Look at India,” said Peter, who had obviously accepted Mr. Fone's theory in no carping spirit.

Jeanie would much rather look at India, and at Mr. Fone's collection of ordnance survey maps, and at Peter's carefree face, than at the picture she had set herself to look at. The mere sight of Peter had lifted her load of care. It was foolish, but she could not help it. She longed to forget Superintendent Finister's visit to Yew Tree Cottage. But she could not.

“Peter.”

“Yes, madam? What can I do for you?”

“Oh Peter, there's something I came to say to you. I must say it. I wish I needn't.”

The radiance departed from Peter's face. He looked at Jeanie with apprehension, though he spoke playfully.

“What is it, Jeanie? You sound rather portentous.”

He laughed a little nervously.

“You haven't got anything horrible up your sleeve, have you, Jeanie?”

“I'm afraid I have, Peter.”

Peter looked at her with a frown, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders defensively hunched, his foot beating nervously on the oak floor.

“Can't you keep it there, Jeanie dear?”

“I'd rather not.”

“All right. What is it, Jeanie?”

Now that she had come to her plain question, Jeanie felt strangely unwilling to ask it. She felt afraid of the answer. Her pulse had actually quickened. She could feel its beat all over her.

“Won't you sit down, Peter?”

“No thanks, I'd rather stand up to be shot at.”

As he spoke the words he crimsoned. It was not, perhaps, in the circumstances, a very fortunate figure of speech. He made a little nervous grimace and went over to the window and leant against the sill.

“Well, Peter,” said Jeanie, and her embarrassment made her voice more incisive than she intended. “You remember that day last week we met on Grim's Grave?”

“Yes, of course.”

“We talked a bit, and you told me what you'd done on the day poor Molyneux was killed?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't have to tell me. But you did tell me. We were friends. And you swore you'd told me
everything
.”

“Well, come, now, Jeanie!
Everything
is a tall order!”

“Everything that had to do with Molyneux's murder and your movements that day. Don't quibble.”

“I'm sorry,” said he coldly.

They might have been friends that day on Grim's Grave. They were enemies now.

“I wish you wouldn't stand with your back to the light, I can't see you at all!” cried Jeanie suddenly, with more exasperation in her voice than she intended.

“I'm sorry,” said Peter woodenly and made a pretence of moving to one side. 

“Well, Peter, it's just this. You said that day you'd told me everything. And you told me, among other things, that there was a pistol missing from the Tower room at Cleedons. You didn't tell me—”

Jeanie had meant to say:
You didn't tell me that it was the one you used for target practice!
She found herself saying instead:

“You didn't tell me it was you who had taken it! You didn't tell me you threw it in Hatcher's Pond. You didn't tell me anything about that pistol!”

Her face was burning. What had made her speak like this? Had she been asked five minutes ago she would have said that she did not believe any of these charges against Peter. Yet she had herself uttered them, ruining—if Peter were, as she believed—surely she believed!— innocent—their friendship for ever.

But Peter seemed in no hurry to repudiate her words, and her friendship and her. He did not, in fact, move nor speak at all. Jeanie saw, though, how his hands slowly grew tense and gripped the sill at each side of him.

“Oh,” he said at last. He spoke in a queer thick cautious voice. “How do you know the pistol is in Hatcher's Pond?”

“It isn't, any more.”

“What?”

“Peter, do you mean that it
was
you who threw that pistol in the pond?”

“What do you mean, it isn't there?”

“The police have got it up. Of course. You must know they've been dragging the pond. What did you expect?”

“I thought they'd finished dragging and hadn't found it,” said Peter thickly. “I've bathed in Hatcher's Pond. I know what that mud is. I thought it had stuck there. I thought when they found that rifle they'd stop bothering their damned heads about my pistol.”

“Oh, Peter,
your
pistol?”

“Well, the one I used to practise with.”

“You said you'd told me everything and you were keeping all this back?”

‘‘What would have been the good of telling you? What would you have thought? What do you think now? Look at you! You think I'm a murderer! Don't you? And the police think I'm a murderer!”

He turned, and Jeanie saw his face white and distorted in the cold November afternoon.

“Oh God!” he cried. “I wish I
had
murdered Molyneux! Then I'd just let them take me and hang me and have done with it!”

“Peter! Oh Peter! What were you doing with that pistol?”

“I suppose I might as well tell somebody before I'm arrested. Perhaps you'll even believe me—who knows?”

“Only tell me everything, this time. Unless—”

“Unless I really murdered Molyneux, you mean?” finished Peter for her with a very bitter-sounding laugh. “Don't worry, Jeanie. I
might
have murdered Molyneux, and the police think I
did
murder Molyneux, and I shall no doubt be
hanged
for murdering Molyneux. But, as it happens, I
didn't
murder him. I'll tell you everything, Jeanie.”

“For the third time!”

“Yes, only it really will be everything this time. You don't mind if I make it short as possible, do you?”

He came forward and sat down on a foot-stool in front of the fire, and held his hands to the flames.

“I like fires. I might as well make the most of this one. I suppose they have radiators in prison.”

“Peter please!”

“Why the hurry? Old Finister's not on the door-step, is he? Or is he? Are you an agent of the police, Jeanie? Oddly enough, I rather like Superintendent Finister. It'd give me great pleasure to hear at this moment that he had fallen dead. But I like him. In happier times we should be brothers.”

“Peter!”

“All right. I'm coming to it. Well, Jeanie.” His voice trembled, and he fished in his coat-pocket for cigarettes and matches. “When I'd seen Agnes and she said she didn't know what I was talking about, and she'd told me to go back to London and not make a fool of myself, and I had made a fool of myself without impressing her in the least—well, then Agnes went downstairs. And I was left in the corridor upstairs. Have you ever thought about suicide, Jeanie? I don't mean academically, but as something that might happen to you?”

“Never.”

“Well, then, you're not a good person to tell this to. I don't suppose it's any good trying to explain suicidal feelings to a person who's never had them. Even a person who
has
had them can hardly believe in them, when he recovers. The despair, the awful empty tediousness in front of one—”

Peter broke off, for his voice was trembling.

“Anyway, when Agnes went downstairs, I just stood there, listening to her footsteps going away. I thought about suicide. It wasn't only that I was out of a job and in disgrace, and with a pretty poor outlook in front of me. It was that awful emptiness and tediousness. I went and got the pistol out of the Tower room and put it in my pocket and went down the Tower stairs and out. Mr. Fone was just coming into the house as I went out. I meant to shoot myself. Only I couldn't decide where to do it. And there was no hurry. I had the pistol ready, and I went over the common. I was kind of waiting for inspiration, really. I knew inspiration would come. And then I'd finish everything. I went and looked at the pond, and thought what a mug's game drowning was compared with shooting—how one would struggle, I mean, and the mud and the foul taste of the water. And suddenly I was inspired. Only instead of shooting myself I found myself chucking my pistol right out into the middle of the pond. And I knew, in an odd kind of flash, as if I could read the future, that I should never be a suicide. And it's funny, Jeanie, but even now I don't feel in the least inclined that way. When I'd chucked the pistol in the pond I stood around for a little, kind of wondering what on earth had made me do it. I don't remember hearing any shot all this time, but I was in the state when one doesn't hear things. And I felt sort of calm, as if things were all fixed up for me somewhere, and all I had to do was just to wait. And I went off, meaning to walk to Handleston and get a train back to London. And I found Agatos in his car. That's all. Do you believe me?”

“Yes of course.”

“I don't know why you should. After all, Jeanie, I could easily have murdered Mr. Molyneux. And if I had murdered him, this tale I've just told you is just the sort of tale I should make up. That's how Finister'll argue. Isn't it?”

“I shouldn't be surprised,” replied Jeanie, trying to speak lightly. “Unless—won't they be able to tell that the pistol hasn't been fired lately?”

Peter shrugged.

“I shouldn't think so. It's been in the pond a week. It'll be all chugged up with mud. It only had one cartridge in it, anyway. I thought that would be enough to kill myself with. It seemed more final and fatal, somehow, to take only one.” Peter gave a somewhat hollow laugh. He rose to his feet and as his face drew out of the circle of firelight into the cold light of the window his glance seemed to rest nowhere, but flickered round the room as if he thought an enemy might be hidden behind some piece of furniture. “Let's go and find Fone, shall we, Jeanie, and help him scan the horizon for tracks?”

“I don't think I will, Peter. I've been invited for Wednesday, and I think I'd better wait for then.”

“Wait for then!” echoed Peter. “I don't like that word wait! I've got to wait now, I suppose, Jeanie. I've got to wait to find old Finister standing at my shoulder uttering the well-known words, ‘Anything you say will be used in evidence against you.' Do you think it would be any good my running away?”

“Oh Peter, no!”

Peter, prowling restlessly about the room, stopped and looked down at her. His face was pale, his dark eves contracted.

“I can't—just wait.”

“Oh please do, Peter! Running away wouldn't be the slightest use!”

“Perhaps not. But it'd be something to do.”

“It would be my fault. What should I do when I heard you'd been—arrested?”

Peter's frown relaxed as he met her protesting, tearful eyes.

“Come with me, Jeanie! I've often thought it'd be fun to flee from justice, but justice has never given me the chance before.”

He smiled, but there was still a wild, tense look about him. Jeanie knew that at a word's encouragement he would be off on a mad, useless flight which could only make his arrest more certain. Was it for this that Finister had been so confiding to her about the pistol? She was Finister's ferret, was she? He put her down the rabbit-hole, in the hope that the scared bunny would bolt into the line of fire. Then, when the wretched Peter was well on his way to London or Timbuctoo, the saturnine officer would step in and calmly take his man, his criminal fleeing from justice! Jeanie sat up with sudden energy.

“No, Peter, no! You mustn't! Promise me!”

Peter's smile faded. He looked at Jeanie as though her vehemence surprised him.

“Mustn't I? Must I wait for old Finister to jump out on me? All right, Jeanie, if that's what you want me to do.”