Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (17 page)

When Mrs. Ellison sent for me about nine o’clock I made sure she would tell me that I must make other arrangements for the rest of my vacation. Indeed after a few stammerings of sympathy I volunteered to clear out next day.

‘Please do not consider it,’ she said. ‘Unless you find that this house now distresses you. For myself I would welcome your staying on.’

She had borne up marvellously. Her manner was at its clearest and coolest; there was even a kind of sparkle about it. I had heard that great blows sometimes produced this effect for a short while before the shock of them was fully apprehended.

‘I shall need you, David,’ she said, adding with a slight catch in her voice, ‘now that I no longer have another man about the house.’

‘I’ll be delighted to do anything I can,’ I said. ‘Not that it’s likely to be much.’

‘I shall have to manage things by myself now,’ said Mrs. Ellison.

‘I’m sure you’ll do it excellently.’

‘I shall have to manage by myself,’ she repeated. ‘I shan’t have anyone to tell me what I must do about this and that. It’s never been so for me. First there was Joseph all the time, and then poor Cedric. . . .’

Her voice tailed away in the contemplation of her future defenceless and unharried state. It was impossible to believe that she found the vision displeasing. A younger and stronger person would have been better able to conceal the fact that she had discovered a compensating aspect of the tragedy.

At the time I was a little shocked and I came to a false conclusion. I thought her attitude meant that, despite their relationship, she could not honestly mourn Cedric. I did not then understand how absurdly low is the human power of concentration and how the most sincere grief is liable to be upset by some involuntary calculation of personal advantage: nor that, so far from being blind, love is often painfully clear-sighted and permits an extraordinary degree of impartial judgment, even about such matters as the value to the world at large of the loved one’s continued existence.

Mrs. Ellison gave a faint chuckle.

‘Fulk never gave me orders. “Do it your own goddam way, Mother,” he’d tell me.’

I had expected that Nurse Fillis would supervise my talk with Mrs. Ellison or at least that she would interrupt it as soon as she thought fit. But in fact I was left to make my own excuses when I saw that the old lady was getting tired. This indifference was so far removed from her usual professional standards that I felt vaguely disturbed. Half-knowing what I would hear, I crossed the vestibule of the invalid’s self-contained suite to the room occupied by her nurse. From behind the closed door came the sound of deep laboured breathing which never quite mounted to a sob.

I was seized with pity for this unlucky young woman. She was probably suffering more acutely because she could not even demand recognition of her grief. Besides it is a bitter thing for the survivor of a one-sided passion to know that if the other party could be recalled to momentary consciousness he would not share her sense of loss.

I tapped on the door. After a few moments it was opened by Nurse Fillis. She stood there in her dressing-gown, trying to control her features.

‘I’m coming,’ she said. ‘Just let me get her tablets and the brandy.’

‘Mrs. Ellison’s all right,’ I replied. ‘I think it’s you who could do with a shot of brandy.’

She must have caught the unfamiliar kindness in my tone, for she dropped her attempt at normality. Her body sagged against the frame of the door.

‘You’d better lie down again,’ I said.

She went back to the bed, pushing aside the top pillow on which there was a dark patch of moisture. I found the decanter which she kept for Mrs. Ellison’s emergencies and poured a tot into her tooth-glass.

‘Good night,’ I said. ‘Try to sleep. You’ve had a terrible day.’

‘Does everyone see it like that?’ she asked bitterly.

‘Yes, of course. You—you mustn’t imagine things.’

I moved to the door, but she called me back.

‘Stay for a moment, Mr. Lindley . . . I promise I won’t be rude to you.’

‘The shoe’s generally on the other foot.’

She said: ‘I’m not keeping you to swap compliments.’ Shock and despair had tautened the loose genteelism of her speech. She went on: ‘In spite of what you might think, I’ve always respected your cleverness and your good education. They stand out a mile.’

‘That confirms my worst fears,’ I said, in a feeble attempt to raise a smile.

‘So I want to ask you something. . . . Do you believe in a future life?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m inclined to think not. But it wouldn’t surprise me.’

She accepted this equivocal answer with an ease which made me suspect that she had already settled the basic hypothesis to her own satisfaction and had still to reach the real object of her inquiry.

‘The Christian religion says that we’re all miserable sinners,’ she said, ‘and we shall have to make up for our sins. I’ve never understood it properly, like my mother and my sister, who’re real Church people. . . . But, Mr. Lindley, do you think a person gets credit for his death?’

‘Credit?’ I repeated blankly.

‘You know—if he has a sad, painful sort of death, will it count towards the time he has otherwise to do in . . . purgatory or somewhere?’

I felt another stab of pity. This form of solicitude was new to me and in my eyes it had an absurd pathos like that of a doll’s funeral.

‘I’m sure it will,’ I said. ‘That’s why saints like to be martyrs.’

She seemed happier and I gave her another brandy to fix her in that state. But it was an over-compensation and made her once more slightly aggressive.

‘Why should he have fallen like that?’

‘Swimmin’ in the ’ead,’ I quoted automatically.

‘First I’ve heard.’

‘He kept quiet about it,’ I replied diplomatically.

‘Ah,’ said Nurse Fillis, ‘but did he keep quiet enough?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘The matron I did my training under used to say that a good many patients would still be alive unless their relatives had known what could go wrong with them. It gives people ideas.’

‘You’re overstrung,’ I said.

Though I pooh-poohed her ambiguous yet crude suggestion, it left an uneasiness which followed me upstairs.

My landing was in darkness. As I approached its further end I heard a rustle from behind the curtains which half-covered the recessed window. Then I noticed a fold of lighter-coloured material and a stockinged foot protruding towards me. Varvara was looking out over the sweep of Aynho Terrace in which the street-lighting had just come on. She did not start when I called to her.

‘What is it?’ I asked softly.

‘There!’ she hissed, pointing at the other side of the road, directly opposite to our window.

A policeman on his beat had paused beneath one of the lamps and was idly scanning the façades around him.

‘I don’t see anything odd,’ I said.

‘Already I am being watched.’

Her whisper vibrated with dismay and dramatic satisfaction.

‘What the hell! He can’t see into the house.’

She dug her nails into my arm with exasperation.

‘To stop me escaping, you fool.’

‘Why should you want to escape?’

‘You are pretending in order to keep up courage in your heart. The police believe that I have killed my uncle.’

Now that she had expressed her fear I realized that I must have made a considerable subconscious effort to avoid recognizing the grounds for it. They existed; but I could still say with a fair degree of candour:

‘Nonsense. They might as well suspect me.’

‘That is not unlikely,’ said Varvara with conviction.

11

I had hoped that a night’s rest would restore their senses of perspective, such as they were, to both Varvara and Nurse Fillis. But in the former at any rate the symptoms of persecution mania seemed to have waxed overnight. Breakfast began in an atmosphere of clotted melodrama.

‘Before the police hang me,’ she said, ‘I shall save my breath to utter a great cry of innocence.’

I had given up trying to convince her that the English police in no way corresponded to the bodyguard of an alien Governor; consequently there did not seem much point in trying to dissociate them from the job of executioners.

‘You’re the only person in the world who even entertains the idea that you could be connected with your uncle’s death. Anybody who accused you would probably be locked up in a looney-bin.’

‘They know that he was my enemy.’

‘Rot! They know absolutely nothing about the private affairs of your family. Nor want to.’

It was unfortunate that Nurse Fillis should have entered a few minutes later and announced that she had just been answering the telephone; the police had rung up to say that they would be coming round again that afternoon.

‘I hope they’re not going to ask you a lot of awkward questions,’ she said.

I think she had forgotten the transient suspicions which cropped up when her mind was excited by brandy. Her remark did not strike me as carrying any innuendo. But of course her back was scarcely turned before Varvara had fitted her neatly into the Websterian plot.

‘She is their agent. She has given information against us.’

‘Can’t you forget your feuds for a couple of minutes?’

‘Why are they coming? Answer me that!’

‘Because there’s been a fatal accident. In this country inquiries into a death don’t mean suspicion of murder. The police are simply out to help the coroner and his jury.’

Varvara changed her tack.

‘On the roof edge, even if a man slipped, there is a little wall to stop him. How did it not stop my uncle?’

‘Varvara,’ I said after a long pause, ‘if you go on in this way, you’ll soon have me and a lot of other people asking just that question.’

‘There you are,’ she said, with the splendid obtuseness of a lioness worrying at the jaws of a lion-trap.

‘Varvara . . . you don’t know any more about Cedric’s death than you’ve told me?’

‘I am innocent,’ she proclaimed.

‘That wasn’t exactly what I asked you. But never mind.’

‘You are innocent also. But who will believe us?’

‘I wish you’d leave me out of your damned fantasies,’ I said crossly.

The persistent linking of our fates had begun to jar me. Varvara had a compulsive power which seemed to wax rather than wane with the absurdity of the idea which she was trying to impose.

Possibly I have given the impression that she was in a panic. Far from it. She believed in her peril but she was facing it with a good deal of the joy of battle in her heart.

The police were as good as their word. At three o’clock a party of them arrived: an inspector, a sergeant, and two constables. They asked to be shown on to the roof-garden. Varvara insisted on watching them from the morning-room and I was sticking to her like a shadow for fear that she would drop some disastrous brick.

Thus it happened that I witnessed an experiment which further shook my complacency. The sergeant—not the one who had come on the day of the accident—was a big-boned man, about six feet in height, not fat, but well-covered. First he bound a couple of thick strips of sorbo-rubber round the middle part of his thighs. Then he put on a sort of rough waistcoat of very strong canvas; threaded through it, so as to run round his chest, was a rope, whose ends trailed behind him until the two constables picked them up.

The harnessed man went to the parapet at the edge of the roof-garden, and stood sideways against it. I noticed that the piece of rubber on his thigh just about coincided with the coping.

‘O.K.,’ said the Inspector. ‘Watch out!’

The last words were addressed to the constables and one soon saw why. The big sergeant began leaning gradually out over the drop. The ropes were still slack and it was remarkable what an angle his body could attain without needing their support. But suddenly he gave a shout and the two policemen jerked him back before he could fall.

This procedure was repeated several times from different positions—with the face to the parapet, backing on to it, and half-turned. Then the experiment entered on a new and more exciting phase. The sergeant retreated a few yards and deliberately put himself into a stagger, so that he struck the parapet whilst still in motion. He was obviously simulating the action of a man who—for one reason or another—had lost his balance.

I wondered whether it was tact and the awareness of our watching eyes that prevented the Inspector from starting his guinea-pig off with a good push.

I must say I developed a respect for that sergeant. Even with his protective leggings it must have been a painful business to hurl oneself repeatedly against a sharp stone edge. Moreover, though the ropes were there to save him, his position would not have been pleasant if the constables had taken up the slack too late and allowed him to fall and dangle with only the dubious support of his canvas belt. But he stuck to his task and was rewarded by success in demonstrating several things to the most casual observer. The first was that a human body stationary by the parapet would not go over unless something happened completely to unsettle its centre of gravity. Secondly, though a man in motion would take the hurdle more easily, he would have to be pretty well out of control to get up sufficient impetus.

There were two obvious ways in which this last condition could be satisfied: a suicidal rush or unexpected violence.

I began to feel more than ever uneasy, and I was only slightly reassured by the bright candid friendliness with which the police took their departure. Surely they could not suspect Varvara when they called her Miss so deferentially and thanked her, as Mrs. Ellison’s representative, for putting the roof at their disposal? And yet—and yet—

When we were alone, Varvara did not make any comment on the proceedings, and I thought that perhaps their significance had escaped her. After a while she disappeared. I sat on, however, gloomily pondering the situation and shying away at intervals from my own conclusions.

Presently I heard soft footsteps passing the door on their way downstairs. One of the maids, I thought idly. But after they had reached the landing below there was an irresolute pause. Then they started to come up again with a firmer, louder beat. Now they unmistakably belonged to Varvara. The door opened and she walked in carrying a small suitcase and wearing outdoor clothes.

‘I could not do it,’ she announced.

‘What?’

‘Leave you here to be captured.’

‘What is this nonsense? And what are you doing with that bag?’

‘It holds my clothes and some poison in case I am caught.’

The truth suddenly dawned on me.

‘My God, you little imbecile, you’re not running away!’

‘I am going into hiding,’ said Varvara with dignity.

‘How long d’you think that would last?’

‘Months, perhaps.’

‘More like hours! The police would be on your tracks immediately.’

‘Once a thief or murderer is outside the city and away in the country nobody troubles about him,’ she said stubbornly. ‘It is well known.’

It was hard to keep in mind the shortness of her acquaintance with Britain and the gaps in her knowledge of it. Apart from the road to Henley and its environs she knew nothing of the countryside which she seemingly regarded as interfused with great stretches of desolation where outlaws could roam indefinitely. Her geography and her history were both about seven hundred years out of date.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You’re pushing your head straight into the noose. If there’s one thing that could persuade the police to charge you, it’s bolting. They’re bound to interpret it as an admission of guilt—particularly when you’ve been warned that you’ll be wanted at the inquest.’

The Inspector had given us both this notification before he left.

‘They have already made up their minds,’ said Varvara. ‘The fat one was proving that you cannot fall off our roof without . . . help.’

‘But you can, Varvara. You must be able to. Because Uncle Cedric did it . . . didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Varvara glumly.

In the aggregate I recognized the psychological forces to which she responded. But I was like a layman in an engine-room, confronted by a tangle of anonymous pipes and taps. Together they made the machinery go but I had no idea which did precisely what. To me the signs were equally consistent with her having played some part in her uncle’s death (I could not believe that she had deliberately killed him); or with a morbid pleasure in the idea of being wrongly accused of a capital crime.

‘For God’s sake,’ I implored her, ‘let yourself be guided by somebody who knows the ways of this country!’

‘Who?’

I had forgotten that she did not recognize the modest English idiom whereby people recommend themselves impersonally. Since she did not accept me as filling the bill I was virtually bound to produce an outside arbiter. Apart from other difficulties, there were not many persons to whom I would have cared to explain the situation.

‘Andrew, for instance,’ I said reluctantly.

‘Andrew would take me to a safe refuge in his car,’ she said.

‘Let’s see, then.’

‘Except that his car is still broken.’

‘Never mind. If he agrees with your tactics he can hire a horse.’

The merits of Andrew as a referee grew with reflection. He was a calculator, a man who kept his own head and discouraged other people from losing theirs. He had no use for hysteria or melodramatics.

Alas, Varvara seemed subconsciously to realize this. She would not agree to call him in. Several times she picked up her bag and made for the door. But a wedge of doubt had entered her mind. She was no longer anxious to take the plunge of departure. As she had apparently no goal except some imaginary wilderness, her hesitation was not surprising.

Eventually, rather by the use of prayers than argument, I persuaded her to postpone her flight till next day.

‘But what if the police come and seize me tonight?’

‘They won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well . . . after dark they’re too busy catching burglars and assassins.’

‘Where?’ said Varvara.

In misfortune she had developed an embarrassing vein of scepticism.

‘Oh, Limehouse. The Chinese quarter, you know.’

She nodded with satisfied comprehension and I knew that I had gained a respite.

Later that evening it struck me that her refusal did not invalidate my plan of consulting Andrew. I could go by myself. The dangers of the situation were multiplying like yeast in my mind and I longed for support from any quarter.

Andrew’s father’s flat was furnished in a way which seems to have died out in the nineteen-thirties. And small cause for lamentation. The prominent objects were in an off-centre Second Empire style and all quite useless—cabinets without shelves, console tables with pin-point tops and tabourets too low for a human and too high for a dog. Amongst this blaze of ornamentation the effective articles, those actually intended for use, skulked in corners as if aware of their own inadequacy.

With difficulty I perched myself on a small black satin settee. Andrew stood in front of me, holding a drink, whilst I gave him a résumé of events. It was simplified by the fact that he had seen a paragraph about Cedric’s death in one of the papers.

‘I wonder you didn’t ring up,’ I said unthinkingly.

‘Why?’ he replied with unnecessary vehemence. ‘I didn’t see that I could do any good. People usually have too many ’phone calls at these times.’

Very true, very just, very considerate. All the same it gave me a chilly feeling that, in time of trouble, Andrew might show remarkable powers of absence.

When I had finished he asked one or two sensible questions. ‘What was Ellison’s build?’

‘Just over six feet and pretty solid. I’d put his weight at about fourteen stone.’

‘Could Varvara have thrown a man that size?’

‘She’s as strong as an ox,’ I said gloomily. ‘Besides, if you catch anyone unawares . . .’

‘Well, my God, David, I’m bound to agree with you. If the daft girl doesn’t show up at the inquest—the police
will
get ideas.’

‘To my mind it’s inconceivable she should imagine that decamping would solve any problems. What does she think she’s going to do with the rest of her life? Flit about Sherwood Forest like Maid Marian?’

The slightly smug expression which both Andrew and I were inclined to wear when exhibiting our trophies of confidence came over his face.

‘It’s ridiculous, I grant you. But not entirely unintelligible—at any rate if one knows the background.’

‘What background?’

‘When she was five or six, before her father became such a big pot in their God-forsaken town, he and his servants had a dispute with some characters who were either Customs officials whom they mistook for bandits or bandits whom they mistook for Customs officials—I’m not sure which. Anyway, they killed half a dozen of them and it caused a certain amount of sickness on the part of the authorities. So, to escape arrest, the whole household migrated about fifty miles into the desert and camped at some monastery. They stayed there for six months; then they came back, and by that time nobody was interested in a few stale old murders. She thinks it would work out the same in England.’

As usual I was not very pleased when I found somebody else knowing things about Doljuk which I did not. Shifting the subject, I said:

‘Well, anyway, you agree that it will be fatal if she runs away?’

‘Yes,’ said Andrew, but he paused with his head on one side as if he were listening to the echo of his own answer. After an interval he corrected himself: ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

‘What!’ I said, thunderstruck. ‘You must be as crazy as she is. She’ll—’

‘Wait a moment,’ he interrupted, ‘and give me credit for what I actually said. It’s not the running away which will cause the trouble, it’s being absent when wanted by the authorities.’

‘That sounds to me like a quibble.’

‘It isn’t, though,’ said Andrew, smiling whimsically. ‘I’m just pointing out that there’s no reason why she shouldn’t have the satisfaction of flight provided that we can get her back before she’s missed.’

‘That’s damned likely! Once she takes the bit between her teeth, it’ll need a public hue and cry to fetch her home.’

Andrew did not take offence. Indeed he scarcely seemed to hear me, so deeply was he plunged in thought. At intervals he gave me little bulletins on his progress.

‘I’m getting it. . . . No, that won’t do. . . . What we want is something like ju-jutsu! You let the other party make his own move: then you give a subtle tweak which lands him exactly where you want.’