The Courtesy of Death (16 page)

When I had been supplied with a dressing-gown and was lying down, trying not to show the little intelligence I had left, the station sergeant came in and asked if I was fit to be interviewed by
the C.I.D.

‘Almighty, man!’ this admirable doctor exclaimed. ‘He’s going straight to hospital. Can’t you see that he’s half starved?’

‘He’d got fifteen pounds in his pocket.’

‘So what? Obviously from his behaviour he didn’t want to be found, and he couldn’t go into a shop.’

‘Any bruise on his head?’

‘No. But it isn’t essential. He’s had a smack on the jaw which knocked out a tooth—quite hard enough to account for concussion and lost memory, though I think all
that’s wrong with the boyo is that he just doesn’t want to remember. Besides that, the tissues of the neck need excising and I want an X-ray on the jaw.’

The sergeant asked if Detective-Constable Somebody could at least have a look at me before the ambulance arrived, to which the doctor replied that for all he cared they could take tickets at the
door, but that I was to be out of there in ten minutes.

The C.I.D. man asked me a few formal questions: little more than had already been put to me in the police car. I tried to be helpful and remained deplorably vague. He was very young and out of
his depth in a case of lost memory. It is possible that his senior officers were occupied elsewhere. I should have liked to listen to them taking down the Bank Manager’s statement on
Jedder’s accident.

‘He couldn’t be this chap Fosworthy, could he,’ the sergeant asked, ‘what his housekeeper is anxious about?’

The young detective constable at least spotted my quickly suppressed interest.

‘Fosworthy,’ he repeated. ‘Are you Fosworthy?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘No.’

The station sergeant trotted out to look up the file, and returned to say that I was not tall enough and my hair was not fair.

Because I did not know who I was, all of them treated me as a sort of non-person, speaking more openly in front of me than, I suppose, they would have done in the presence of a plain car thief.
The C.I.D. man collected my coat and trousers for analysis of the blood stains and asked to be supplied as soon as possible with my blood group. It was certainly going to deepen the mystery when
they got down to putting that little lot through the test tubes. A geologist could have given them a more revealing report than a pathologist.

‘They’ll be jacking up the insurance premiums round here,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s a farmer been carted off to Taunton General who stepped into a wooden box of
.22 cartridges and they blew up under him. Would you believe it? And then look at poor Tom Aviston-Tresco! Climbing over a gate with a pitchfork and slipping!’

‘Come in threes, they do,’ the sergeant replied. ‘We had four last time, not counting motoring offences.’

‘Which last time?’

‘Drunk and disorderly in Gough’s Cave. Turned out he was an epileptic, you remember. Next day, rape. And after two bloody hours in the C.I.D. office she comes out that she
wasn’t feeling like it in them clothes which was party. Same afternoon, chap leaves a suicide note in a tea caddy where you wouldn’t think to look for it, and the gaffer says it’s
murder. Then half the night we’re up on a case of breaking and entering which was just the next-door neighbour clearing the dear little sparrows’ nests from the gutter which he
hadn’t a right to. Coincidence, that’s what it is. Makes you think them bishops on the telly must have got something.’

One tends in trouble to be too self-centred. It was comforting to know that I was not the most exciting and enigmatic incident in weeks, and that Mysteries, as the local paper would call them,
were considered routine rather than evidence of a serious crime wave.

I appreciated the sergeant’s point of view. The unlikely does occur in streaks. I remember how in West Africa the shaft broke through a most improbable formation of blue clay which we were
all convinced was a diamond pipe; the same evening our foreman was chased into the bush by a leopard-man who turned out to be a hyaena with its head stuck in an empty twelve-pound tin of bully; and
two days later a mad Russian walked into camp and got a grub stake out of us with a story of panning five hundred dollars worth of gold in two days—which we just laughed at, though it proved
to be very nearly true.

I was taken to hospital, cleaned, shaved and fed. They didn’t go in for psychiatry. I was cheerfully assured that when I was in a presentable physical condition I should have to appear in
court and would certainly be remanded for further enquiries. Meanwhile the Taunton specialists would get back my memory for me. I was not to worry.

I did worry. I was dead certain to meet the registrar who knew me very well after that cheerful evening together, and then Dunton would arrive as fast as his car could take him. It sounds
irrational, but I dreaded that. It was one thing to tell him my story in secret and appeal to him to help me to disappear, and quite another to be forced into an uncontrollable situation in which
the truth would have to come out publicly and he could hardly help at all.

A surgeon operated on my untidy neck and fussed about it, or perhaps about the jaw. I was not told. But I have never been an imaginative person where my own body was concerned—unless
apologised to—and both neck and jaw felt comfortable enough to me. The stitches and dressings gave me an excuse for talking as little as possible and muttering when I did. It amused my hearty
nurse that I was prepared to eat however much it hurt.

In spite of this comparative luxury, I was desperate. I could not make up my mind what to do. The old problem. Have some guts and come clean, or have some more and get clear. But I could see no
hope. The hospital had my money. Some forensic laboratory had my clothes. I possessed nothing in the world but a pair of pyjamas and a dressing-gown—and those belonged to the County. It was
enough to make a man feel he had lost his identity even if he hadn’t.

The ward was a small one, with cases—chiefly accidents—which were more painful than serious. We were encouraged to move about and cheer each other up. It was hard not to be friendly,
but I thought melancholy would fit my part better. I don’t know if it was clinically correct; there must be cases of lost memory which would dance for joy at having lost it. However, nothing
prevented me moving aimlessly about, so I used to stroll up and down the long, shiny passage outside my ward, deep in thought.

The passage ended at a T-junction, the left-hand arm of which led to the operating theatre. I watched the nurses and orderlies wheeling unconscious, healthy-looking patients in, and moribund,
bloodless patients out. The orderlies, often hanging about between jobs and ready to talk, accused me of showing a morbid interest. They were anxious to satisfy me that surgery was miraculous. They
said I ought to think of the skill—of the craftsman, in fact, rather than of his raw material.

So that was what I did and asked questions, preserving my character of a man who disliked his unknown self and his fellow human beings as well. I wanted to know why the surgeons strolled out of
the hospital beaming, whereas the patients—to the eye of a layman—looked only fit for the morgue. Oh, there were showers and a changing-room, I was told, where the great men could
freshen themselves up after the heat of the theatre. They needed it. Tomorrow, for example, two of them would be at it for four or five hours.

It was quite mad, impossible to plan properly, but lying awake at night I decided to risk it. After all, if I were caught, it was only one more charge to be added to the others for which the
psychiatrists would have to invent motives—or motivations as they prefer to call them.

The operation was booked for 10.30 a.m. I hung about in and out of the lavatories until I was chased back to my ward by an angry assistant matron, but I managed to see the two surgeons come
through the glass door at the end of the right-hand arm of the T-junction. One was too tall and the other running to a distinguished middle-age spread. The anaesthetist, however, was not far off my
build and wearing a non-committal dark suit.

At eleven I had to be in or on my bed for a visit by the house surgeon and an unwanted cup of tea. After that, nobody would require my presence till lunch at twelve. Bolting my tea, I mooned off
down the passage and sat on a window-sill from which I could keep watch—when not staring at nothing with melancholy eyes—on at least three or four doors to the left of the T. As soon as
a moment came when nobody was busily dashing out of wards and offices, I padded down the corridor past the double doors of the theatre and jumped through the next door which had to be that of the
room I wanted. I was all prepared to burble excuses, but it was empty.

Shirts and suits were hanging neatly on a rail. Shoes and socks were scattered around more untidily. I grabbed a shirt of the right size and had just time to slide into the shower-room as
somebody opened the door and looked in. When it shut again, I took the anaesthetist’s suit and dressed in the shower-room. The pockets contained only his small change. Valuables, I think,
were left in individual lockers. I did not try the locks, partly because I was racing against time—never did I dress so quickly—partly because I had an old-fashioned inhibition against
stealing money, whereas sheer desperation permitted me to pinch clothes.

I took off the dressing from my neck and pocketed it. The mirror assured me that most of the wound was safely under the collar and that the stitches which showed above it were hardly visible if
I kept my head down. Throwing pyjamas and dressing gown into a laundry basket, I covered them with an overall which was already there. Then I grabbed a fine black hat, the final touch of
professional respectability, and opened the door an inch.

I could not see who was or wasn’t in the corridor without sticking my head right out. The place seemed a hive of industry, healing and trolleys. I had gained a lot by talking to idle
orderlies but now every one of them would recognise me, besides all the nurses who served my ward. My chances of being able to pass the T-junction and reach the glass door to the open were
slim.

With growing panic I waited. It then occurred to me that some other damned doctor might want to change, and I rushed at the first comparatively peaceful moment. My own passage, when I crossed
the junction, had half a dozen people in it. I passed the end in two strides holding my splendid hat in front of my face as if I were about to put it on. A door opened and shut behind me. I did not
look round. Two sisters were stuck on the threshold of a ward, having a difference of opinion in low, annoyed voices; they were too occupied with each other to give me a glance. A trolley of
crockery was pushed at me from a pantry, but again I had time to hide my face from the pusher. I was through the glass door and out into the car park.

I was not going to loiter there and be caught trying door handles; so I walked out of the main gate and kept walking. I looked at the cathedral clock and couldn’t believe it. It was only
half past eleven. I had a chance of safety if I could move quickly enough. Money did not bother me. I knew where I could get that—on condition that I was always one jump ahead of the
police.

After an exasperating delay I picked up a taxi and told the driver to take me to Warminster. As we went along, I let him know that I was a Bristol surveyor and wanted to inspect a small parcel
of agricultural land just outside the village. I stopped him in the middle of nowhere and then had to sneak half-way round Warminster Sleight before I could climb the knoll without being seen. By
the grace of God my wallet was still in the woodpecker hole. So back again, running, to the taxi. It was ten past twelve, and the search for me in the hospital would be hotting up.

I directed my taximan to Glastonbury, but not through Wells as I wanted to see the country. It took him less than quarter of an hour. I think he wanted his lunch. It was fair to assume that the
hospital orderlies would now be combing the lavatories, the basement and the gardens, and that the police would have been warned. But since nobody could know what I was wearing until the current
operation was over the description of me would, with luck, be vague and might even mention that I had escaped in pyjamas.

Leaving the taxi in the centre of the town and telling the driver to wait for me, I dashed into a deserted alley and dealt with my smart, black hat. Having served to hide my face and impress the
world with my professional standing, it had now become an embarrassing property. I could not be tracked by the anaesthetist’s dark suit, which was just a dark suit, but that hat would give me
away all over the West Country if I continued to wear it. There was nowhere I could leave it with any certainty that it would not be found, so I flattened it and stuffed it half way down the seat
of the anaesthetist’s trousers.

Then, hatless as I normally was, I went round a corner and into the Somerset and Dorset Bank. I kept the wounded side of my neck away from the counter and asked the clerk to tell the Manager
that Mr Yarrow wanted to see him. I was shown into his office about as quickly as a stranger has ever been received in any bank, and he nervously slammed his door behind me.

‘I wonder if you would be good enough to cash me a cheque for thirty pounds,’ I said.

‘You really …? You really …?’ he stammered.

Naturally he knew nothing of my adventures after leaving the barn. I should love to learn why he thought I had called on him. Blackmail, probably.

‘Yes, really. Thirty in pound notes, please. After all, I am personally known to you.’

I wrote out a cheque, and he rang for his clerk to get the money. The man came in on the wrong side of me. I kept my head well down, undoing and doing up a shoe lace.

‘You are still thinking of settling here?’ the Manager asked, compelled by his training to say something.

‘No. I’m not inclined to open up at present.’

I stressed the opening up. He got it, and gave a sort of pant of relief. He had evidently heard of the proposed gentlemen’s agreement, but doubted it.