The Elderbrook Brothers (39 page)

‘You
had?'
said the policeman curiously.

The man's evident surprise shook Matthew out of his dream. He saw that he had stupidly assumed too much, that the doom he had already accepted was not yet upon him; and with the discovery his heart seemed to stand still. Despair, a moment
before, had frozen him calm. This new hope made him tremble. He was suddenly afraid, of the future and of himself. He was afraid of the burden he must carry and afraid lest he should incontinently cast it off. Almost more than anything in the world he wanted to take this good fellow into his confidence and tell him everything. But he was not a free man: there was Ann to consider.

‘That's right,' said Matthew. ‘He hasn't turned up this morning.'

‘I see. Do you know anything about him?'

‘Not a thing,' said Matthew. ‘He's only been with us a matter of weeks.'

‘When did you see him last, Mr Elderbrook?'

‘Oh, he was about the place yesterday. I didn't notice particularly.' Matthew faced his man with an air of candid interest. ‘Do you want the fellow? What's he been up to?'

‘Well, not exactly. The fact is, sir, we've got him. He's dead.'

Matthew's eyebrows shot up. ‘Dead?'

He felt shame at having to deceive this friendly-spoken police officer, though nothing but satisfaction in his news. So it was true then: he was dead. What else of last night was true?

‘He was found on the line this morning. Nasty mess.'

‘The line?' said Matthew. ‘Do you mean——'

‘The railway line tother side of the Hitcham road from your own land, Mr Elderbrook. Willie Probert identified the body and told us deceased worked for you. On and off, he said. Funny little business. Money in the pockets and everything.'

‘Well now,' said Matthew, ‘that's a thing that hasn't happened all my life. No, not in living memory it hasn't. It's a steep cutting, is that one. I've known it from a child. Why should anyone go down there?'

The policeman shrugged his shoulders. ‘Can't say, I'm sure. I was wondering if you could throw some light on it.'

‘Me? How should I?' Matthew's voice was sharper than he intended.

‘It runs only just inside the Midlingford boundary, that railway line,' said the policeman, going off at a tangent. ‘A few yards east and the Keyborough folk could have had him. And welcome, too. Head as good as off, you might say. What was on his mind, I wonder.'

Matthew said harshly: ‘I wasn't in the gentleman's confidence.'

‘Quite so, Mr Elderbrook. Seems to have been rather a lone wolf, by all accounts.'

‘I take it then,' said Matthew, ‘you think he did it deliberately?'

‘That's for the Coroner to say, sir. Still, between you and me …' He nodded sagaciously. ‘In the absence of evidence as to state of mind and so on, they'll have to bring it in accidental. Can't help themselves. But … well——'

‘Would you like to talk to the men?' Matthew suggested.

‘I've done that, sir.' Oh you have, have you, Matthew thought grimly. ‘We shan't need
them
again, Mr Elderbrook, but we'd like a word or two from you, sir, if you don't mind. Inquest's tomorrow. Ten o'clock sharp at the Town Hall'

So that was it. A trap. Get him there and tie him into knots and make him say too much.

‘Ah,' said Matthew. He spoke slowly, with a painful smile. ‘So you want me to waste my morning at Midlingford, do you, in that draughty Town Hall of yours? And what's the good of it? I've told you all I know, and that's nothing at all. He wasn't much more than a tramp, when all's said. Here today and gone tomorrow. Nobody knew anything about him, and he wasn't,' said Matthew, suddenly relishing his own candour, ‘he wasn't what I'd call a likable chap either.'

It was a comfort to be speaking even that much truth.

THE day of the inquest dawned cold and clear. A white frost lay on field and road, and dusted the smooth contours of Horse's Nape in the distance. By nine o'clock the day was bright with winter sunshine, and Matthew decided to ride to Midlingford on his seldom-used bicycle. At the bottom of his mind was the unstated thought that if the inquest should culminate in his own arrest the bicycle would be an encumbrance more easily and less conspicuously disposed of than pony and trap. He wished, too, to circumvent Ann's just perceptible intention of going with him to Midlingford if she were given a chance. He could not conceive why she should want to attend an inquest, unless it were with a vague hope of protecting him from dangers dimly surmised. He was confident that she could know nothing of that night's doings, though he found it matter for disquiet that she had let the subject drop, saying nothing about it next morning. Nor had she made any further reference to Hilda. Because of his intolerable tiredness that question had made small mark in him, and he could no longer persuade himself that she had really asked it, that it was not a mere fragment of dream. He was right in thinking that his acute consciousness of the coming inquest was not entirely hidden from Ann. What he could not know was that there was something she wanted urgently to say to him, something she preferred to say in the open, away from the house; that she felt forlorn, resolved, courageous, torn between pride and love; that she could not bear to watch this widening distance between him and herself. He was unaware of any such distance: it was in her mind only. In his mind was the tension of a resolve not to be tricked or frightened into saying too much. All he had to do was to forget that he knew anything more of the affair than other people, and to give evidence accordingly. That should not be difficult to remember. Nor should the truth, being so fantastic, be difficult to ignore or to suppress. So, on the surface of his mind, he argued, turning a deaf ear to the voice
within that was for ever trying to persuade him to blurt it all out.

In a state of specious calm he mounted his bicycle and set off. The world about him was vivid and beautiful. The fields, the hedgerows, Mrs Makin's cottage, the Winsted corner with its triangle of cropped grass, geese strutting on the green at Sawston End, the narrow lane past Foxcombes overhung with sycamores, the Angler's Arms by Stedham, and the white ribbon of road that ran across the peaty gorse-covered common which he had explored as a child: these features of an oft-travelled route had for him this morning a startlingly intimate quality. It was as if he were looking on them for the last time. Every one of the half-dozen people he encountered on the road recognized and greeted him. He responded heartily, gratefully, and caught himself wondering, for a crazy second, whether they would come to see him hanged. That was his one lapse from a mental calm studiously maintained. If he sighed, it was with the strain of that artificial tension. If he regretted anything, which he was loth to admit, his regret was narrowly circumscribed: he could wish himself guiltless, he could wish himself confessed and shriven, but he could not wish Caidster were alive again. The air of morning was the cleaner and sweeter for that death, the sky fairer, the sunshine more invigorating, the heart lighter: or would have been, had he himself had no hand in it. His satisfaction in a dirty job well done stumbled always into this anticlimax. If only it were done, but not done by him, how blessed life would be! If only he could believe that it had indeed been, as so nearly it was, an accident! The area of his guilt was small, the merest pinpoint in time. Five seconds, no more, had made him a murderer. It was an odd, an incredible notion; and true to his resolve he put it aside. There would be a time for such thoughts hereafter. But not now.

As he turned into the main street of Midlingford the hands of the church-tower clock stood at ten to ten. He was in nice time, neither too early nor too late. He wheeled his bicycle
round to the back of the Town Hall and lodged it in the rack which the Rural District Council had recently provided. He remembered idly that in 1918 there had been an epidemic of bicycle-stealing, and he decided he would mention that piece of local history to the first person he encountered, in order to show that he was perfectly at ease. But walking back to the entrance he forgot all about that plan in the surprise of finding no one there. The door yielded to his push and he found himself in a stone-paved passage, with a stairway ahead and shut doors on either side. The place was draughty, as he had predicted; and the long wooden bench, placed for the convenience of just such visitors as he, did not invite him. He strode up and down, startled by the noise of his own boots on the stone floor. The place was cold as a tomb. He was tempted to go on tiptoe, lest the dead should rise and clay-coloured faces come peering round the doors to right and left of him. He looked at his watch and was astonished to see that little more than a minute had passed since he came in. Summoning his courage he knocked at every door within sight. He felt diffident and nervous, like a schoolboy calling on his headmaster, and was relieved to get no response. He wondered if he had come to the right place, and was angry wit}i himself for being—and at his age—so callow and ineffectual. Perhaps keeping your suspect waiting was part of the technique. But there was still, he chided himself, five minutes to go. I'm losing my nerve, he said: that's what I'm doing. Better get outside again.

On the steps, as he went out, he met his friendly policeman coming in.

‘Good morning, sergeant. Jackson I think you said?'

‘That's right, sir. Glad you're early, Mr Elderbrook. I'd like you to slip down the road with me if you don't mind.'

‘What's the idea?' said Matthew, a shade too heartily. ‘Can't get a drink at this time of day.
You
ought to know that, Jackson.' He laughed.

‘Too true, sir. Wish we could. Sharp this morning. But
nice and bright.' Already, with two fingers on Matthew's elbow, he was piloting him down the road. ‘It's only a few steps,' said Jackson smoothly. ‘I can do with cold weather myself. Always could, from a boy. So long as we don't get rain. That's what I always say.'

When they had passed the turning to the police station Matthew said:

‘Where the deuce are you taking me?'

‘It's just here, in Slocombe Turn,' said Jackson, guiding him round a corner into a steep and very narrow lane.

‘What is?' Matthew asked impatiently.

‘The mortuary. It won't take us a minute.'

‘The mortuary?' Matthew felt his belly heave. But a sudden anger saved him. ‘Third degree. With smiles, eh?'

The remark seemed to be lost on Sergeant Jackson. ‘When it came to swearing, Probert thought we'd better have a second witness, just to make sure. And since you're here-'

‘I'm here for the inquest, not for this sort of thing.' He came to a dead halt. ‘It must be past ten o'clock,' he added. ‘It is,' he said, taking out his watch.

‘That's right, sir. We've got half an hour.'

‘You said ten o'clock yesterday.'

‘So I did,' Jackson agreed. ‘But they're making it ten thirty, to suit the Coroner. Half an hour we've got. And look, Mr Elderbrook, it won't take half a minute.'

Matthew shrugged his shoulders. It would be unsafe to resist further.

‘Well … have it your own way.'

MATTHEW sat in the court-room, waiting for the proceedings to begin. In his mind a stunned silence alternated with chattering activity. To avoid further trouble he had declared himself ready to swear to the identification; but what they had
shown him under the sheet in the mortuary was not recognizably Caidster, was not recognizably anyone. I didn't do that. Not a quarter of it. The train did that. You can't frighten me. Jackson caught him by the arm. ‘Steady, old man!' Someone had laboured to give the corpse a meretricious dignity, with grotesque results. But back in the open air he felt better. ‘I shall be all right,' he said, swaying slightly. Jackson had surprisingly produced a small metal flask from his hip pocket. ‘So we're having a drink after all,' Matthew said. ‘Why not give
him
one? Looked as though he could do with it.' He did not listen to Jackson's soothing reply, and presently they were walking up the road together, returning the way they had come. ‘Wonder if my bicycle's still there,' said Matthew. ‘Remember how they used to disappear in the war, Jackson?' It comforted him to have got that remark off his mind.

And now, still with time to spare, he waited for the proceedings to begin. The dragging movement of time was the worst thing he had yet endured: it seemed as if years had passed since he left Upmarden this morning. He shut his eyes for a moment, but quickly opened them again, for with shut eyes he found he could not control what he saw. Nor, if he dozed, could he hold his thoughts in check. It was imperative to keep very wide awake. He felt that he had been waiting all his life for this inquest to open, seated on this bench and facing what he could not help thinking of as the stage. There were steps leading up to the witness-box, and the seat of justice, equally elevated, dominated the whole scene. The hands of the courtroom clock stayed so long at ten twenty-seven that he felt sure it must have stopped, and he was saying so to Jackson his neighbour when a door opened at the back of the ‘stage' and an elderly gentleman came in, unwound a green muffler from his neck, and within absent-minded nod to the assembled company, who stood up to testify their respect, sat himself down in the seat of authority and began cleaning his spectacles with a large silk handkerchief. While finger and thumb rubbed the lenses he screwed up his eyes at the papers set in front of him.

Presently a conversation began between the Coroner and a senior police officer; It went on for some moments before Matthew realized that the inquest for which he had waited so long was actually in progress. He had braced himself for something theatrical, but to these officials that thing in the mortuary was merely part of a dull day's work. With a glance towards the jury the Coroner mentioned, more to himself than to them, that his present business and theirs was to find a verdict on the death of a person known as Caidster, other names unknown: at which point the police officer took up the tale, remarking that the identification would be sworn to by two witnesses and that the Police Surgeon was ready to offer an opinion on the cause of death. George Faussett, railwayman, deposed to finding the body at such-and-such a point on the line, and in reply to a question said that the last train to use that line (before the finding of the body) would be the 12.30 express from London to Mercester, which passed that point at approximately 4.55 every morning except Sunday. William Richard Probert, a railway porter employed at Hitcham Halt, said the body looked to him like the man called Caidster. Asked did he mean that Caidster was not the man's real name, he said no one knew much about him. Asked if he were sure that the body was that of the man known as Caidster he said that was how it looked to him but being in such a state as it was he wouldn't like to say not for certain.