The Lime Twig (14 page)

It was a heavy rain, the sort of rain that falls in prison yards and beats a little firewood smoke back down garret chimneys, that leaks across floors, into forgotten prams, into the slaughterhouse and pots on the stove. It fell now on the roof of the stables in the Highland Green area and caused the trough beneath the pump to overflow, tore cobwebs off small panes of glass, filled wood and stone with the sound of forced rainwater. Timbers were already turning black, and the whistling of far-off factory hooters was lost in the rain.

Two chauffeur-driven automobiles approached with water spilling back from the wipers and cleaving down the hoods. They were black automobiles, though the rain gave them a deep-blue shine. They were high-bodied, carried special insignia, the radiator caps were nickel-plated. Grille to bumper they came into the cobbled yard and parked near the pump. The doors and windows remained shut, the engines continued to run; for half an hour the cars stood shedding the rain and no one alighted. Finally, when the rain failed to slacken, two men wearing waterproofs and bowlers got down—small men, Violet Lane detectives.

Wiping their faces with damp handkerchiefs, they went together down the wide walk between the rows of stalls, and the black cars followed at a little distance,
low gears running smoothly as music boxes. The odor of rain-washed bridges drifted up to mix with dead smells of the stables: spread out from here were the gravel heaps, the leaking slate roofs and single rooms and roots and, farther on, the jewels, the places of execution, the familiar castle walls. All wet, all pitched in gloom. The two men knew this rain. It meant tea with lemon, housemaids out of mood, drops of water on spike fences and lickings for their boys. It meant women going it upright beneath the bridges and tall blue sergeants caped and miserable, helpless on all the corners. And it meant a dampness in the trousers that no coal fire could dry.

They stopped together at the stall door. They wiped their faces. They watched the water coming down the crevices in the wood, they inspected the hinges, the type of nail used, made note of a dead wasp caught on a green splinter. Then one pulled open the door and they stepped inside, looked up at the rafters, down at the straw, touched the wall planking with the very ends of their fingers, prodded the straw with their black shoes. And squatted and carefully took away the straw until Hencher’s legs were uncovered to the knees. One fetched a black rubber ground sheet from his car; they rolled and sealed up the body. The straw would have to be sifted through a screen.

They posted one of the drivers to guard the stall until the laboratory boys could take the body and the straw. The driver stood at attention, a lonely man in an empty stable with his shoulders black with rain and his chin
pulled into his collar. He smelled the burden on the other side of the wood. It was darker now and the rain heavier.

Between the two gently rocking cars—machines heavy with the sounds of their engines and streaming black—the Violet Lane detectives faced each other, stood close together and stared into each other’s eyes. The mortuary bells were ringing and the water was coming off the brims of the bowlers.

“It’s never nice to find these fellows in the rain.”

“Well, I expect we’d best get on with it.”

“We could trace him through the laundries.”

“And there are always the tobacco shops, of course.”

“Right. I’ve made out well before with the laundries.”

“Go to it then. I’ll try the shops. …”

And in gloom, with the bells stroking and the wipers establishing the uncomfortable rhythm of the hour, the two wet men withdrew to the cars and in slow procession quit the sooty stables in Highland Green, drove separately through vacant city streets to uncover the particulars of this crime.

The Beetle Leg

The Blood Oranges

The Cannibal

Death, Sleep & The Traveler

Humors of Blood & Skin

The Lime Twig

Lunar Landscapes

The Owl

The Passion Artist

Second Skin

Travesty

Virginie: Her Two Lives

Copyright © 1960, 1961 by John Hawkes

Copyright © 1961 by New Directions Publishing Corporation

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 60-14719

ISBN:
978-0-811-22256-3(e-book)

Portions of this book first appeared in
Accent
,

Winter 1960, and
Audience
, Spring 1960.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin by New Directions Publishing Corporation, 80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011.