The Black House (3 page)

The study door moved and Portland Bill walked in. Michael never quite closed his door, and Bill had an assured way with doors, rearing a little and giving them a push.

Dickenson blinked at the cat, then said to Michael in a firm voice, “I could stand a whiskey. May I?”

Michael went downstairs and brought back the bottle and two glasses in his hands. There had been no one in the living room. Michael poured. Then he shut the door of his study.

Dickenson took a good inch of his drink at the first gulp. “I may as well tell you now that I killed Reeves.”

A tremor went over Michael's shoulders, yet he told himself that he had known this all along—or since Dickenson's telephone call to him, anyway. “Yes?” said Michael.

“Reeves had been . . . trying it on with my wife. I won't give it the dignity of calling it an affair. I blame my wife—flirting in a silly way with Reeves. He was just a lout, as far as I'm concerned. Handsome and stupid. His wife knew, and she hated him for it.” Dickenson drew on the last of his cigarette, and Michael fetched the box again. Dickenson took one. “Reeves got ever more sure of himself. I wanted to sack him and send him away, but I couldn't because of his lease on the cottage, and I didn't want to bring the situation with my wife to light—with the law, I mean, as a reason.”

“How long did this go on?”

Dickenson had to think. “Maybe about a month.”

“And your wife—now?”

Tom Dickenson sighed, and rubbed his eyes. He sat hunched forward in his chair. “We'll patch it up. We've hardly been married a year.”

“She knows you killed Reeves?”

Now Dickenson sat back, propped a green boot on one knee, and drummed the fingers of one hand on the arm of his chair. “I don't know. She may think I just sent him packing. She didn't ask any questions.”

Michael could imagine, and he could also see that Dickenson would prefer that his wife never knew. Michael realized that he would have to make a decision: to turn Dickenson over to the police or not. Or would Dickenson even prefer to be turned in? Michael was listening to the confession of a man who had had a crime on his conscience for more than two weeks, bottled up inside himself, or so Michael assumed. And how had Dickenson killed him? “Does anyone else know?” Michael asked cautiously.

“Well—I can tell you about that. I suppose I must. Yes.” Dickenson's voice was again hoarse, and his whiskey gone.

Michael got up and replenished Dickenson's glass.

Dickenson sipped now, and stared at the wall beside Michael.

Portland Bill sat at a little distance from Michael, concentrating on Dickenson as if he understood every word and was waiting for the next installment.

“I told Reeves to stop playing about with my wife or leave my property with his own wife, but he brought up the lease—and why didn't I speak to
my
wife. Arrogant, you know, so pleased with himself that the master's wife had deigned to look at him and—” Dickenson began again. “Tuesdays and Fridays I go to London to take care of the company. A couple of times, Diane said she didn't feel like going to London or she had some other engagement. Reeves could always manage to find a little work close to the house on those days, I'm sure. And then—there was a second victim—like me.”

“Victim? What do you mean?”

“Peter.” Now Dickenson rolled his glass between his hands, the cigarette projected from his lips, and he stared at the wall beside Michael, and spoke as if he were narrating what he saw on a screen there. “We were trimming some hedgerows deep in the fields, cutting stakes too for new markings. Reeves and I. Axes and sledgehammers. Peter was driving in stakes quite a way from us. Peter's another hand like Reeves, been with me longer. I had the feeling Reeves might attack me—then say it was an accident or some such. It was afternoon, and he'd had a few pints at lunch. He had a hatchet. I didn't turn my back on Reeves, and my anger was somehow rising. He had a smirk on his face, and he swung his hatchet as if to catch me in the thigh, though he wasn't near enough to me. Then he turned his back on me—arrogantly—and I hit him in the head with the big hammer. I hit him a second time as he was falling, but that landed on his back. I didn't know Peter was so close to me, or I didn't think about that. Peter came running, with his ax. Peter said, ‘Good! Damn the bastard!' or something like that, and—” Dickenson seemed stuck for words, and looked at the floor, then the cat.

“And then? . . . Reeves was dead.”

“Yes. All this happened in seconds. Peter really finished it with a bash on Reeves's head with the ax. We were quite near some woods—my woods. Peter said, ‘Let's bury the swine! Get
rid
of him!' Peter was in a cursing rage and I was out of my mind for a different reason, maybe shock, but Peter was saying that Reeves had been having it off with his wife too, or trying to, and that he knew about Reeves and Diane. Peter and I dug a grave in the woods, both of us working like madmen—hacking at tree roots and throwing up earth with our hands. At the last, just before we threw him in, Peter took the hatchet and said—something about Reeves's wedding ring, and he brought the hatchet down a couple of times on Reeves's hand.”

Michael did not feel so well. He leaned over, mainly to lower his head, and stroked the cat's strong back. The cat still concentrated on Dickenson.

“Then—we buried it, both of us drenched in sweat by then. Peter said, ‘You won't get a word out of me, sir. This bastard deserved what he got.' We trampled the grave and Peter spat on it. Peter's a man, I'll say that for him.”

“A man . . . And you?”

“I dunno.” Dickenson's eyes were serious when he next spoke. “That was one of the days Diane had a tea date at some women's club in our village. The same afternoon, I thought, my God, the fingers! Maybe they're just lying there on the ground, because I couldn't remember Peter or myself throwing them into the grave. So I went back. I found them. I could've dug another hole, except that I hadn't brought anything to dig with and I also didn't want . . . anything more of Reeves on my land. So I got into my car and drove, not caring where, not paying any attention to where I was, and when I saw some woods, I got out and flung the thing as far as I could.”

Michael said, “Must've been within half a mile of this house. Portland Bill doesn't venture farther, I think. He's been doctored, poor old Bill.” The cat looked up at his name. “You trust this Peter?”

“I do. I knew his father and so did my father. And if I were asked—I'm not sure I could say who struck the fatal blow, I or Peter. But to be correct,
I'd
take the responsibility, because I did strike two blows with the hammer. I can't claim self-defense, because Reeves hadn't attacked me.”

Correct
. An odd word, Michael thought. But Dickenson was the type who would want to be correct. “What do you propose to do now?”

“Propose? I?” Dickenson's sigh was almost a gasp. “I dunno. I've admitted it. In a way it's in your hands or—” He made a gesture to indicate the downstairs. “I'd like to spare Peter—keep him out of it—if I can. You understand, I think. I can talk to you. You're a man like myself.”

Michael was not sure of that, but he had been trying to imagine himself in Dickenson's position, trying to see himself twenty years younger in the same circumstances. Reeves had been a swine—even to his own wife—unprincipled, and should a young man like Dickenson ruin his own life, or the best part of it, over a man like Reeves? “What about Reeves's wife?”

Dickenson shook his head and frowned. “I know she detested him. If he's absent without tidings, I'll wager she'll never make the least effort to find him. She's glad to be rid of him, I'm sure.”

A silence began and grew. Portland Bill yawned, arched his back and stretched. Dickenson watched the cat as if he might say something: after all the cat had discovered the fingers. But the cat said nothing. Dickenson broke the silence awkwardly but in a polite tone:

“Where are the fingers—by the way?”

“In the back of my garage—which is locked. They're in a shoe box.” Michael felt quite off balance. “Look, I have two guests in the house.”

Tom Dickenson got to his feet quickly. “I know. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, but I've really got to
say
something to them because the Colonel—my old friend Eddie—knows I rang you up about the initials on the ring and that you were to call on us—me. He could've said something to the others.”

“Of course. I understand.”

“Could you stay here for a few minutes while I speak with the people downstairs? Feel free with the whiskey.”

“Thank you.” His eyes did not flinch.

Michael went downstairs. Phyllis was kneeling by the gramophone, about to put a record on. Eddie Phelps sat in a corner of the sofa reading a newspaper. “Where's Gladys?” Michael asked.

Gladys was deadheading roses. Michael called to her. She wore rubber boots like Dickenson, but hers were smaller and bright red. Michael looked to see if Edna was behind the kitchen door. Gladys said Edna had gone off to buy something at the grocery. Michael told Dickenson's story, trying to make it brief and clear. Phyllis's mouth fell open a couple of times. Eddie Phelps held his chin in a wise-looking fashion and said “Um-hm” now and then.

“I really don't feel like turning him in—or even speaking to the police,” Michael ventured in a voice hardly above a whisper. No one had said anything after his narration, and Michael had waited several seconds. “I don't see why we can't just let it blow over. What's the harm?”

“What's the harm, yes,” said Eddie Phelps, but it might have been a mindless echo for all the help it gave Michael.

“I've heard of stories like this—among primitive peoples,” Phyllis said earnestly, as if to say she found Tom Dickenson's action quite justifiable.

Michael had of course included the resident worker Peter in his account. Had Dickenson's hammer blow been fatal, or the blow of Peter's ax? “The primitive ethic is not what I'm concerned with,” Michael said, and at once felt confused. In regard to Tom Dickenson he was concerned with just the opposite of the primitive.

“But what else is it?” asked Phyllis.

“Yes, yes,” said the Colonel, gazing at the ceiling.

“Really, Eddie,” said Michael, “you're not being much of a help.”

“I'd say nothing about it. Bury those fingers somewhere—with the ring. Or maybe the ring in a different place for safety. Yes.” The Colonel was almost muttering, murmuring, but he did look at Michael.

“I'm not sure,” said Gladys, frowning with thought.

“I agree with Uncle Eddie,” Phyllis said, aware that Dickenson was upstairs awaiting his verdict. “Mr. Dickenson was provoked—
seriously
—and the man who got killed seems to have been a creep!”

“That's not the way the law looks at it,” Michael said with a wry smile. “Lots of people are provoked seriously. And a human life is a human life.”

“
We're
not the law,” said Phyllis, as if they were something superior to the law just then.

Michael had been thinking just that: they were not the law, but they were acting as if they were. He was inclined to go along with Phyllis—and Eddie. “All right. I don't feel like reporting this, given all the circumstances.”

But Gladys held out. She wasn't sure. Michael knew his wife well enough to believe that it was not going to be a bone of contention between them, if they were at variance—just now. So Michael said, “You're one against three, Glad. Do you seriously want to ruin a young man's life for a thing like this?”

“True, we've got to take a vote, as if we were a jury,” said Eddie.

Gladys saw the point. She conceded. Less than a minute later, Michael climbed the stairs to his study, where the first draft of a book review curled in the roller of his typewriter, untouched since the day before yesterday. Fortunately he could still meet the deadline without killing himself.

“We don't want to report this to the police,” Michael said.

Dickenson, on his feet, nodded solemnly as if receiving a verdict. He would have nodded in the same manner if he had been told the opposite, Michael thought.

“I'll get rid of the fingers,” Michael mumbled, and bent to get some pipe tobacco.

“Surely that's my responsibility. Let me bury them somewhere—with the ring.”

It really was Dickenson's responsibility, and Michael was glad to escape the task. “Right. Well—shall we go downstairs? Would you like to meet my wife and my friend Colonel—”

“No, thank you. Not just now,” Dickenson interrupted. “Another time. But would you give them—my thanks?”

They went down some other stairs at the back of the hall, and out to the garage, whose key Michael had in his key case. Michael thought for a moment that the shoe box might have disappeared mysteriously as in a detective story, but it was exactly where he had left it, on top of the old jerricans. He gave it to Dickenson, and Dickenson departed in his dusty Triumph northward. Michael entered his house by the front door.

By now the others were having a drink. Michael felt suddenly relieved, and he smiled. “I think old Portland ought to have something special at the cocktail hour, don't you?” Michael said, mainly to Gladys.

Portland Bill was looking without much interest at a bowl of ice cubes. Only Phyllis said, “
Yes!
” with enthusiasm.

Michael went to the kitchen and spoke with Edna who was dusting flour onto a board. “Any more smoked salmon left from lunch?”

“One slice, sir,” said Edna, as if it weren't worth serving to anyone, and she virtuously hadn't eaten it, though she might.