Midsummer's Eve (55 page)

“It’s all over now. He looks as if he is really out. We’ll just go and let them know we’ve found him.”

“He might get away and escape.”

Ben knelt down. The man had not moved since he had fallen. He looked strangely still. Ben lifted his head. It fell back with a jerk but not before we had seen the blood staining his thick dark curly hair. The back of his head was covered in blood. So was the stone onto which he had fallen.

Ben looked at me in horror. His next words sent a tremor of fear through me. “He’s dead,” he said.

He let him fall and then he added: “I’ve killed him.”

“Oh, Ben … it can’t be … What’ll happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Ben.

“You just saved me … that was all. He can’t be really dead … not just like that.”

“I hit him pretty hard … but it wasn’t that only. He fell on that stone. There’s a sharp edge. It looks as if it has penetrated his head.”

I just stared at him in sudden terror. My thoughts went back to the picture in the gallery. I saw clearly my grandfather’s laughing eyes. Jake Cadorson, who had killed a man who was attempting to assault a young gypsy girl. It was murder and in spite of the fact that he had saved the girl from her attacker he had been sentenced to transportation for seven years.

Ben had killed a man … a murderer wanted by the law. But it would be called murder or at least manslaughter … and my grandfather’s punishment for the same offense had been seven years’ exile.

It must not happen to Ben.

Ben had lost his bravado. I could see that he was thinking what I was.

He said slowly: “I … I killed him.”

“You didn’t mean to. You had to stop him. If you hadn’t killed him he would have killed you.”

“It was murder,” he said. “They’d say it was murder.”

I began to tremble. “My grandfather,” I began. “It was the same … almost exactly the same. … But this man was a murderer …”

“What did you say they did to your grandfather?”

I replied through chattering teeth: “They were going to hang him but my grandmother saved him … and then they sent him away for seven years. It was considered a light sentence.”

Ben was silent. He could not take his eyes from the man.

I said slowly: “Ben … no one must know.”

“They’d find out,” he said.

“How?”

“They do. There are clues and things like that. You don’t know you’ve left them but they find something you didn’t think was important. And what about this blood?”

He stood for a while in silence staring at the water. “That’s it,” he said.

“What, Ben?”

“We’re going to throw him into the pool. Nobody will find him there.” He seemed to regain his old fire. “Come on. Help me, Angel. We’ll get him to the pool.”

I thought wildly: It’s the answer. He’ll disappear. No one will think of looking for him there.

He was heavy. We pulled him across the grass leaving a trail of blood. We had him right to the edge of the pool. I noticed that his eyes were open; he seemed to be staring at me. I thought: I shall never be able to forget him.

I turned away and as I did so I caught sight of something glittering near the water’s edge. It was a ring. I picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of my skirt. I don’t know why I bothered to do that at such a time. I supposed because I had to stop looking at that man and thinking of him, even for a split second.

“What are you doing?” asked Ben. “Here. Help me get him into the water.”

He put some stones into the man’s pockets to weigh him down, and we pushed the body into the pool, but it was shallow and we had to wade in so that we were sure of getting him to the deeper part.

The water was cold. I was shivering. He slipped out of our grasp. For a moment I saw his head with the dark wet hair, the odd pallor of the skin, the open accusing eyes.

As I turned away I fell. I was completely immersed. Ben picked me up and said: “It’s over. We’ve done it.”

We stood on the edge of the pool, Ben’s arm about me.

“Stop shaking, Angel,” he said. “He’s gone. No one will ever find him. There are no tides in the pool to wash his body ashore. He’s gone forever. Let’s get away from here.”

He held me close to him as we walked to the horses. His, fortunately, had remained waiting. I could not stop looking at the trail of blood on the grass.

Ben looked up at the sky. “There’ll be rain tonight. That will wash it all away.”

“Suppose someone sees it before?”

“No one will. Few come here. Besides, you’d have to look for it to find it … and nobody could be sure that it was blood.”

“It’s a terrible thing to kill a man,” I said.

“We didn’t kill him. It was an accident. And, remember, he would have done to you what he did to that other girl. It was justice. If we are sensible we shall feel no regret about him. He deserved to die. He would have been hanged when he was tried and found guilty which he obviously was. We’ve got to be sensible about this. Oh God, Angel, you are so young.”

“I … I don’t feel young,” I told him.

He took my face in his hands and kissed it.

“It’s our secret, Angel.”

“But he’s dead, Ben, and it was because of us that he died.”

“No, it was because of himself. It was justice. I feel no remorse.”

“But when they know …”

“They are not going to know. Why should they ever know? If they found out there would be a fuss. They would say we killed a man. We disposed of his body.”

“We shouldn’t have done that, Ben. We should have gone and found them and told them …”

“There would have been such a fuss. They would have accused us. They might even call it murder. They did with your grandfather, didn’t they? It’s a similar case.”

“But the man he killed was not a murderer.”

“It makes no difference. Listen to me. We are in this together. It is our secret. We can’t bring all the scandal there would be on our families. There would be endless gossip. You know how people exaggerate. Imagine the press getting hold of it. No, as far as we are concerned it is over.”

“How can it ever be over?”

“It will be … if we don’t let anyone know. They will hunt for him and they won’t find him. They’ll think he has escaped. There’ll be questions and more questions. They’ll never let us rest. They’ll say I killed him and you were an accessory after the fact … that’s how they talk. We don’t want a great fuss. It would be exaggerated and remembered for the rest of our lives. It is always so in these cases. Consider all your legends. How they have grown up through distortion and exaggeration. We should be branded forever and they would punish us in some way … even though they would have hanged him … which would have been far worse for him than the way he died. So we’ve got to think of a way out of this. We have to think of our families. It’s the only way. I know what we must do.”

“What?” I asked.

“We must get away from here at once and not let anyone know we came here. We must say nothing about what happened. Can you do that, Angel? Not to anyone … not a word.”

“Yes … yes, I think so.” But I looked down at my sodden clothes. There was blood on my jacket.

“We’ll have to give some sort of explanation,” Ben went on. “We’ll say you had a fall. That’s the answer. It will account for the state you are in. But there must not be a word about what actually happened … about him.”

“There’ll be some way they’ll find out.”

“Not if we play it carefully. Stop shaking, Angel.”

“I can’t help it. I just feel so cold.” I started to sneeze and for a few moments could not stop.

He looked at me anxiously and said: “Listen, Angel. This is terrible, but we’re in it now and we have to get out of it.”

“When they don’t catch him …?”

“They’ll think he’s got away. It will be as easy as that.” Ben was beginning to regain his confidence. There was even a look of excitement in his eyes. “We’ll do it. But we’ve got to plan very carefully. He’s gone. He won’t be able to murder any more young girls … never again. We’ve done a good thing. No one will ever know that he is at the bottom of the pool. His clothes will be waterlogged. He’s right down at the bottom. He’ll never be found. We’ve saved him from the hangman’s rope, and that was what he deserved and what would have come to him. We’ve done him a good turn. We’ve done all those little girls whom he might have murdered a good turn. …”

Cold and shivering as I was I felt better. Ben was so convincing. I began to believe that if he decided what we must do was the best thing for us, it would be for everyone else too.

There was nothing I wanted more than to get away and forget.

He was talking coaxingly. “You see, Angel, how awful it would be for us and our families if it were known. I don’t know what they would do to us. They wouldn’t let us go off scot free. When people are killed there is always trouble. But we mustn’t stay here. What are we going to do? You’re wet through … and so am I. We can’t say we’ve been in the pool. We’ll have to say we were wet through by the sea. Look. It happened this way: You were galloping along the beach. You know how you like to do that. Glory stumbled over a boulder and threw you. You were close to the sea and the waves washed over you. You hurt yourself on a rock. That will account for the blood. You just went over Glory’s head. You lost consciousness for a few seconds. Thank goodness I was with you. That’s how it will have to be. Can you do it?”

“Yes, Ben, I think I can.”

“Then let’s get away from here. The sooner the better.”

He took my hand. I was still trembling.

“You’d better not ride,” he said. “We’ll get you up on Glory and I’ll walk you home.”

He was right. I realized I could not have ridden. There were times when it seemed as though the earth were coming up to meet me and I was shaking all over.

Ben murmured soothingly to me as we walked along. “The thing is not to talk too much about it. Make yourself believe it happened the way we said it did. You can come to believe it. …”

“I’ll never forget it … the way he looked at me. Oh, Ben, it was so horrible.”

“You’ve got to forget it. It doesn’t do any good to go on remembering that sort of thing. We did the best possible thing … the only possible thing … and now we’ve got to forget it and make our story the real one. When the truth is too distressing to contemplate it’s not a bad idea to substitute it with fancy.”

“You’ll be there to help, Ben?”

“I’ll be there.”

“I think I can do it then.”

“Angel,” he said, “you know I love you.”

“Oh really, Ben? I love you, too.”

“When I think of that man … and you … dear innocent Angel … I’m
glad
I did it.”

“I wish someone else had. I wish he had never escaped out here.”

“It’s no use wishing it away. It won’t go that way. It’s our secret and, dear Angel, you will be all right. It will be better as time passes.”

“I feel very strange, Ben. Everything seems far off.”

“It will be all right.”

He held me firmly. I was hardly aware of the road as we traveled along.

I vaguely remember my mother as she rushed out crying: “What is it? What’s happened?” And Ben replying: “Angelet’s had an accident. Glory threw her.”

“My darling child!”

I was so relieved because my mother was there.

My father came running out, fearful and horrified to see the state I was in.

“We’ll get her to bed quickly,” said my mother. “She’s had an accident … riding.”

“Riding? Riding Glory?”

“I don’t think she’s in a fit state to talk,” said Ben.

My mother took me up to my room. She took off my coat and for a second or two studied it in consternation, and putting my hand in the pocket of my skirt, I felt the ring I had picked up.

“What’s that?” asked my mother.

“Oh … nothing … something I picked up.”

“Never mind that now,” said my mother, and I opened a drawer and put the ring into it, vaguely wondering why I had bothered to pick it up except that I had always been interested in things I found and did it automatically.

“We’ll soon have you comfortable,” said my mother. “You’re soaked to the skin. We’ll get you out of just everything.”

She wrapped me in a blanket and put me into bed. I still could not stop trembling.

“Your father has sent one of the men to get Dr. Barrow,” said my mother.

“I’ll be all right.”

“The doctor is going to have a look at you. You never know when you have a fall like that. I don’t think anything can be broken.”

I lay in my bed. My mother sat beside me and in due course the doctor came.

He examined my head. There was now a vivid bruise on my cheek. “Did you fall on your face?” he asked.

“I … I can’t remember. It is all so confusing.”

“Hm,” he said. “Open your mouth. You’ve bitten yourself, I think. You must have done that as you fell. You’ve got some good bruises.”

I was terrified that what he discovered would not fit in with our story.

“On the beach …” he murmured, looking puzzled.

“I can’t remember much about it. Suddenly I was down …”

He nodded and turned to my mother. “Might be a little concussion. It’s a good thing she fell on soft sand. It’s the shock more than anything else. Keep her warm and I’ll give her a sedative that will ensure a good night’s sleep. Then tomorrow we’ll see.”

A good night’s sleep! I thought: I shall never sleep peacefully again. I shall dream of that awful moment when he had his hands on me … and when he fell down … the trail of blood as we dragged him to the pool … and that moment before he went down when he seemed to stare at me with his dead eyes and the water was pink with his blood.

I knew I could never forget and nothing would ever be the same again.

I did sleep deeply, due to what Dr. Barrow had given me, and when I awoke next morning my head was heavy. I felt dizzy and very hot. Memory came back to me and hung over me like a stifling cloak. I just wanted to get back to blissful forgetfulness.

My mother was alarmed when she saw me and Dr. Barrow was immediately summoned.

It was a blessing in a way. It saved me from too many questions and I believe that if I had had to face them while the incident was fresh in everyone’s mind, I might not have been able to support our story.