The Elderbrook Brothers (40 page)

‘On that point, sir,' said the police officer, ‘we have another witness, Mr Elderbrook.'

The Coroner looked up from his papers. ‘The employer of the deceased man, I think?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘In that case it will be convenient to take Mr Elderbrook's evidence a little later. Let's hear what Dr Trevick has to say.'

Dr Trevick was the Police Surgeon. He entered the box and took the oath with an air of patient exasperation. He said that he first saw the body at nine o'clock yesterday morning.
He judged that it had been dead for eight or ten hours. There was a fracture of the cervical spine and a severe injury to the skull. He could not tell whether these two injuries had been simultaneous or not: either could have been the cause of death. There were numerous minor injuries. He examined for knife wounds and bullet wounds and found nothing.

‘Were you aware at the time that the body had been found on the railway line?'

‘Yes.'

‘And were the injuries such as you would expect in a man run over by a train?'

‘They were perfectly consistent with that hypothesis.'

‘Thank you, doctor. Just one other point. The time of the death. You put it at some eight or ten hours before your examination began. That would make it either one hour after midnight or one hour before midnight?'

‘Or any time between those hours,' said Trevick, smiling wearily.

‘Quite so.'

‘You understand, sir, that the figures are largely conjectural.'

‘Perfectly. But there's a little difficulty here. If we take your lower estimate as a minimum, it rules out the supposition that the man was killed by the fast train from London at approximately 4.55.'

‘That is so.'

‘You are definitely of the opinion that death occurred earlier than 4.55?'

‘Definitely. But it's only an opinion. I may be wrong. I can only say …'

Between witness and coroner, himself a medical man, there ensued a cosy technical discussion.

I can explain everything, said Matthew. Let me tell you how it happened. The doctor's quite right. How wonderful science is. With great difficulty he refrained from saying these things aloud.

‘Very well. Let us,' said the Coroner, ‘suppose for a
moment that the man was killed by one train, and his dead body run over, some hours later, by another. Would the condition of the remains allow you to accept that?'

‘Yes.'

George Faussett, recalled, said that there was a train went through Hitcham Halt, a matter of five minutes from where the body was found, at 11.15 on the night in question; and Matthew, before he had time to realize the meaning of that, heard his own name called. He was in the witness-box for something less than two minutes, and an open verdict was returned almost before he got back to his seat. The sudden collapse of his fear shook the earth under him. And he was still afraid.

In the evening of that day, drawn by the smell of excitement, the Haslams drove over. Though Matthew and Roger were well acquainted, and seldom a market-day passed without their meeting, the two families visited each other infrequently. Edie Haslam was a small, lean-faced woman, with bright eyes, faded brown hair, and a mouth deceptively meek. The passing years made little impression on her resolute limited personality: at a first encounter it remained an open question whether she was a worn thirty-five or a well-preserved fifty. If she had beauty it was perhaps in her well-arched eyebrows; if she had a noticeable blemish it was the discreet mole situated within half an inch of her left eye. It was this very thing, however, that made a man look twice, and yet again: the sum of such lookings had woven a snare for Roger some fifteen years ago. The Haslams arrived at the front door, to be anxiously received by Ann, just as Matthew, at the back of the house, was sweeping the farmyard dirt from his boots with a garden broom.

‘Well I never!' said Ann. ‘I
thought
I heard someone drive up. Come in, do. Will the pony be all right?'

‘Ay, she's a good lass,' said Roger. ‘Unless you'd like us to bring her in too?'

Everybody laughed at his little joke, and for a moment it was quite like old times. Matthew came in and the party settled down to talk. Though she kept her face turned towards the guests, Ann was more aware of Matthew than of anyone else in the room. She noticed both that he was very tired and that he seemed unable to keep himself still. He fidgeted in his chair, almost as though he had a flea on him somewhere. She had planned to unburden her mind to him this evening, and so, because she wished the Haslams elsewhere, she was a trifle over-emphatic in hospitality.

‘It
is
nice,' she said, more than once. ‘After such a long time too.'

She knew, and Matthew knew, why they had come tonight. And Roger, rosy and twinkling as ever, was sheepishly aware of their knowing. Only loyalty to a pair of good eyebrows prevented his saying outright that it was Edie who had insisted on coming: he knew that Matthew was not the sort to relish an inquest or enjoy talking about it.

‘Didn't see you at market today, Matthew,' he said.

‘Didn't you, Roger? Come to think of it I didn't see you.'

‘Don't be such a tease, Matt,' said Ann, laughing. She had detected some malice in his irony. ‘Matthew had to go to Midlingford,' she explained.

‘Did he?' said Edie, brightening.

‘There was an inquest on that poor man Caidster. Of course you heard about that? Run over by a train.'

‘We did hear something,' Edie admitted. ‘What a thing to happen! We were so sorry.' She looked straight at Matthew. He thought he read a challenge in her wide-eyed innocence. ‘How nasty for you all!' she said, lowering her glance.

‘But how nice for you, Edie,' said Matthew, ‘to have something to gossip about! How nice for everyone,' he went on, trying to keep his voice pleasant, ‘when some wretched fellow kills himself! Makes a nice change in a dead-alive district
like ours. And in the winter months, with nothing much doing on the farm, it's a real godsend.'

The silence that followed was broken by Edie Haslam saying composedly:

‘What a way to talk, Matthew! But we know you don't mean it.'

‘Do you?' said Matthew. He shrugged his shoulders, smiling painfully.

‘It was the greatest surprise to us,' she said complacently, ‘because, do you know, we'd never even
heard
of the man, let alone knew he was working for you. Everybody else seemed to know, but not us: which was very funny seeing how near we are. We knew you had Patchett, and Edgcombe (isn't it?), and Willy Hughes. But never a word of Caidster. Do you think it was suicide then, Matthew? I hear they brought it in death by misadventure. Do you think it was suicide?'

‘No,' said Matthew. ‘I think it was murder.'

At sight of her gaping astonishment he felt an angry pleasure in what he had said, and was assaulted by a scarcely resistible temptation: to tell her everything he knew; to pile truth upon her platter, morsel by morsel, till she had a surfeit of sensation. He had never disliked Mrs Roger. Her ferreting curiosity had always mildly amused him. He pretended to himself that it amused him now.

‘Would you like to know why?' he said, looking from face to face.

Ann intervened. ‘Come and help me make you some coffee, Edie,' she said, jumping up. Don't mind Matthew's teasing. It's a good job we're old friends. My word it is!'

‘Yes, isn't it?' said Edie sweetly.

In the doorway she turned her head, to give Matthew a backward glance; but Ann drove her forward, the door closed, and the two men were alone.

‘Well, Roger? Did you have a good market-day?'

‘So-so. What d'you think my three heifers fetched? Guess now.'

Casually naming a low figure, in order to give Roger the pleasure of surprising him, Matthew went over to the sideboard and poured some whisky into two glasses. He carried one of them across to Roger, swinging the siphon in his other hand. ‘Say when, Roger.' Roger said when and went on talking about the things nearest his heart. Matthew listened with only one ear: the other was attending to his own thoughts. He was glad, now, of Roger's company and soothed by his easy, sensible talk; but he wished he did not feel so tired. His mind was a mass of wincing memories, and his body ached with the effort of trying to fend them off. In particular there was a vague, deep-seated pain in his back. He had begun to be conscious of it a few minutes after the announcement of the verdict that morning, and it had been nagging him for attention ever since. He wanted very much to go to bed, to sleep, to forget. There were hours to be got through before that could happen, and meanwhile here was Roger, good simple-hearted Roger, prattling comfortably about crops and market prices.

‘How's young Tom getting on?' Matthew asked.

Roger had three children, two boys and a girl. The elder boy was thirteen and doing well at the County School. In a few years he would be his father's right-hand man on the farm. Small wonder, then, that Roger could always contrive to be cheerful, could move on from middle age unaware to a dark shadow lying ahead. Roger had been whitewashing his cowsheds and getting the harness cleaned. Roger had got all his swedes stacked under cover, and though he grumbled and grimaced, saying they were poor trash and what could you expect after a bone-dry autumn, there was a certain comic gusto even in his grumbling. The beans, said Roger, were looking good and sturdy; and so, what's more, were Stephen his ten-year-old and Nesta his baby daughter.

‘She'll be a sparkler, old boy, when she grows up,' said Roger, turning the knife in Matthew's wound. ‘And Steve too. You ought to see him riding his pony.'

When the women came back from the kitchen they had had
their coffee, and their conversation too. Edie Haslam, touching Roger on the shoulder, announced that they must be going. Matthew was aware of having behaved badly, of having in effect broken up the party, but he was too tired to feel remorse on that account. When the visitors were gone he caught Ann's eye regarding him with timid speculation. Because of his huge secret he was shy of her, anxious to avoid the intimacy of a shared silence; and Ann, for a parallel reason, was shy of him. The sound of the pony's trot had scarcely died away before he began talking of bed. It was ridiculously early, but he could do with a long night, he said, knowing that no night could be long enough to ease him of his burden.

‘You don't look well, Matt. Is anything the matter?'

‘Bit of backache. Nothing much.' Merely to avoid hurting her feelings, to soften the indifference of his manner, he added: ‘You might have a look at it, Ann. It feels sort of bruised.'

She followed him upstairs and with a maternal eye watched him undress.

‘Come here, where I can see,' she said. And when she saw she exclaimed in astonishment: ‘What
have
you been doing, Matt? It's all red and patchy, like a scalding. Or like …' She hesitated. ‘Like weals, as if you'd been flogged.'

Turning, he smiled half-wryly at her shocked expression. ‘Well, I haven't been, my dear. Though maybe I deserve it.'

She gave him one startled glance, afraid to ask what he meant, thinking she knew too well. One glance only, and she turned away.

‘Bed's the place for you, Matt.' She spoke with brisk kindness, as to a child. ‘I shall send for Dr Meganzer tomorrow.'

During the long sick-leave that preceded his final release from military duties Felix's first visit had been to Minsterbourne, to renew old ties and discuss his future with Father Hemner,
whom he still regarded as his spiritual director. But in five minutes of conversation with him he had realized, with a queer sense of shock and emancipation, that though admiration was unimpaired and personal liking undiminished he would never again stand to Hemner in the relation of disciple to master. He saw, moreover, that Hemner himself was quietly resolved not to let him do so. The two men met now as friends and brothers in the faith, a faith which Felix was perhaps less willing to define than Hemner was, but which nevertheless served to sustain and confirm him in his chosen course. Indecision, at least, was now resolved. He came to Hemner, not as the youth in khaki who had said goodbye to him three years before, but as a man matured, changed, bitterly enriched, by an experience to which Hemner was a stranger.

From Minsterbourne to Stanton was no great distance. Faith and her family received him with royal honours, as befitted a wounded hero; and so, a thought too soon for Faith's jealous taste, did Mrs Meldreth. Sitting contentedly with her and Kate, in the house he remembered so well, he felt so much at home that it seemed absurd that having found them again he should ever leave them. Florrie was married and living in the far north. Ellen Winter—‘You remember her, Felix?' said Mrs Meldreth. ‘Of course you do: you were
such
friends!'—was working with the Quakers in famine-stricken Europe. He received both items of news with equal interest and equal calm. The passing years had levied no toll on Mrs Meldreth's benign charm, which, on the contrary, had positively expanded with her ample figure. And Kate's promise of beauty was so much more than fulfilled that Felix, reverting to the shyness of his twenties, felt almost afraid of her, till put at his ease by her own ease and directness. That feeling attacked him again, mixed with an ingredient he did not recognize, when visitors arrived for tea and shattered the cosiness of the reunion. Conspicuous among the guests was a Mr Turnbull. Kate, with what Felix thought unnecessary frequency, called him Johnny; they were evidently well
acquainted; and Mrs Meldreth, glancing from one to the other with her usual benevolence, allowed a small sleek smile to nestle in the corners of her mouth.

Felix was the first to take his leave when tea was over. He fancied, without quite knowing why, that it would be unwise to stay longer.