A Judgement in Stone (20 page)

She put the kettle on while Joan lingered in the gun room.

“Poor little birds,” she said. “It doesn’t seem right. What have they done to him?”

“What have
I
done?” said Eunice.

“Too right.” Joan took one of the guns down and levelled it playfully at Eunice. “Bang, bang, you’re dead! Did you ever play cowboys when you were a kid, Eun?”

“I don’t know. Come on, tea’s ready.” In spite of her defiant words, she was nervous that Joan’s hysterical voice would penetrate to the drawing room and be heard above the music. They mounted the first flight of stairs, Eunice carrying the tray, but they never reached the attic floor. Never again was Joan Smith to enter Eunice’s domain, and no final farewell was ever to be spoken between them. Jacqueline’s bedroom door stood open. Joan went in and put the light on.

Eunice noticed that there was a patina of bedroom dust, composed of talcum and fluff, on the polished surfaces, and that the bed was less evenly made than when she had made it. She set the tray down on one of the bedside tables and gave the quilt a twitch. Joan tiptoed round the room, lifting her high heels an inch above the carpet and giggling soundlessly on a series of small exhalations like a person imitating a steam engine. When she reached Jacqueline’s side of the bed she picked up the photograph of George and laid it face downwards.

“She’ll know who did that,” said Eunice.

“Doesn’t matter. You said they can’t do any more to you.”

“No.” After a small hesitation, Eunice laid the picture of Jacqueline face downwards also. “Come on, we’d better have that tea.”

Joan said, “I’ll pour.” She lifted the teapot and poured a steady stream into the centre of the counterpane. Eunice retreated, one hand up to her mouth. The liquid lay in a lake, and then it began to seep through the covers.

“You’ve done it now,” said Eunice.

Joan went out onto the landing and listened. She came back. She picked up a box of talcum, took off the lid, and hurled the box onto the bed. White clouds of powder rose, making Eunice cough. And now Joan had opened the wardrobe.

“What are you going to do?” Eunice whispered.

No answer from Joan. She was holding the red silk evening gown on its hanger. She set her fingers in the circle of the neckline and ripped the dress downwards, so that she was holding the front in one hand and the back in the other. Eunice was frightened, she was appalled, but she was also excited. Joan’s mounting frenzy had excited her. She too plunged her hands inside the wardrobe where she found the green pleated dress she had so often ironed, and she ran into its bodice the points of Jacqueline’s nail scissors. The scissors were snatched from her by Joan, who began indiscriminately slashing clothes, gasping with pleasure. Eunice trod heavily on the pile of torn cloth, she ground her heel into the glass of those framed photographs, she pulled out drawers, scattering jewellery and cosmetics and the letters which fluttered from their ribbon binding. It made her laugh throatily while Joan laughed maniacally, and they were both confident that the music from below was loud enough to drown any noise.

It was, for the time being. While Eunice and Joan were making mayhem above their heads, the Coverdales were listening to one of the loudest solos in the whole opera, the Champagne Aria. Jacqueline heard it out, and then she left the drawing room to make coffee, choosing this opportunity because she disliked the Zerlina and feared she would make a hash of
Batti, batti
. In the kitchen she noticed that the kettle was still warm, so
Eunice must have come back, and noticed too the shotgun on the table. But she supposed George had put it there for some purpose of his own before they had begun to watch television.

The sound of the drawing-room door opening, and footfalls across the hall floor, sobered Joan and Eunice. They sat down on the bed, looking at each other in a mock-rueful way, eyebrows up, lips caught under upper teeth. Joan switched off the light, and they sat in darkness until they heard Jacqueline cross the hall and re-enter the drawing room.

Eunice kicked at a heap of mingled broken glass and nylon. She said, “That’s torn it,” quite seriously, not joining in Joan’s laughter. “Maybe he’ll get the police on us.”

“He doesn’t know we’re here.” Joan’s eyes gleamed. “Got any wire cutters in the house, Eun?”

“I don’t know. Could be in the gun room. What d’you want wire cutters for?”

“You’ll see. I’m glad we did it, Eun. O, we have smitten him in his high places, in the bed of his lechery we have afflicted him. I am the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance! I am the sword in His hand and the spear in His right hand!”

“If you go on like that they’ll hear you,” said Eunice. “I’m glad we did it too.”

They left the tray on the table, the teapot in the middle of the bed. The light was on down in the hall. Joan went straight to the gun room and rooted about in George’s toolbox.

“I’m going to cut the phone wire.”

“Like they do on T.V.,” said Eunice. She had ceased to protest. She nodded approvingly. “It comes in over the front door,” she said. “Stop them phoning the police, that will.”

Joan came back, a silent smile glittering. “What shall we do now, dear?”

It hadn’t occurred to Eunice that they would do anything more. Breaking things down here must necessarily be heard in the drawing room, and, police or not, she and this frail stick of a woman could easily be overpowered by four strong adults. “I don’t know,” she said, but this time her habitual response had a wistful note in it. She wanted the fun to go on.

“May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” said Joan, picking up the shotgun and looking down one of its barrels. “Frighten them out of their wits, it would, if I fired this.”

Eunice took the other gun off the wall. “Not like that,” she said. “Like this.”

“You’re a dark horse, Eun. Since when’ve you been a lady gangster?”

“I’ve watched him. I can do it as well as he can.”

“I’m going to try!”

“It’s not loaded,” said Eunice. “There’s things called cartridges in that drawer. I’ve often watched him do it They cost a fortune, those guns, couple of hundred each.”

“We could break them.”

“That’s what you call it when you open them to load them. Breaking the gun’s what you say.”

They looked at each other and Joan laughed with a sound like a peacock’s shriek.

“The music’s stopped,” said Eunice.

It was twenty-five minutes to nine. Act One had come to an end, in the opera and in the kitchen.

In the lull between acts Jacqueline poured second cups of coffee for all of them. Melinda stretched and stood up.

“Marvellous,” said George. “What do you think, darling?”

“Zerlina’s awful. Too old and too tinkly. George, did you hear any sounds from upstairs during the minuet?”

“I don’t think so. It was probably our
bête noire
slinking in.”

“The last thing she does is slink, Daddy,” said Melinda. “Sneaking, maybe. Oh, God, I’ve forgotten to stop the tape.”

“It wasn’t slinking or sneaking I heard, but breaking glass.”

Melinda switched off her recorder. “They were at a party,” she said, referring to the opera. “I expect it was sound effects.” The rest of what she was going to say was cut off by a thin shriek from somewhere outside the room.

“George!” Jacqueline almost shouted. “It’s that Mrs. Smith!”

“I do believe it is,” said George slowly and ominously.

“She’s out in the kitchen with Miss Parchman.”

“Very soon she’ll be out in the cold with her marching orders.” He got up.

“Oh, Daddy, you’ll miss the beginning of Act Two. Nasty old Parchment Face is probably just having a farewell party.”

“I’ll be two minutes,” said George. He went to the door where he paused and looked at his wife for the last time. Had he known it was the last time, that look would have been eloquent of six years’ bliss and of gratitude, but he didn’t know, so he merely cast up his eyes and pursed his mouth before walking across the hall and down the passage to the kitchen. Jacqueline considered
going with him but thought better of it and settled back against the sofa cushions as Act Two began with the quarrel between Leporello and his master. The tape recorder was on.
Ma che ho ti fatto, che vuoi lasciarmi
(But what have I done to you that you wish to leave me)?
Oh, niente affato; quasi ammazzarmi
(Oh, nothing at all, but almost killed me)!…

George opened the kitchen door, and there he stopped in amazement. His housekeeper stood on one side of the table, her stripy hair coming away from its pins, her pale face flushed maroon, facing the crane-chick figure of Joan Smith, befeathered in green and salmon pink. Each was holding one of his shotguns which she pointed at the other.

“This is monstrous,” said George when he recovered his voice. “Put those guns down at once!”

Joan gave a babbling shriek. “Bang, bang!” she said. Some memory of war or war film came to her. “
Hande hoch!
” she shouted, and pointed the gun at his face.

“Fortunately for you, it isn’t loaded.” Calmly Major Cover-dale of Alamein looked at his new watch. “I will give you and Miss Parchman thirty seconds to put those guns on the table. If you don’t I shall take them from you by force, and then I shall call the police.”

“You’ll be lucky,” said Eunice.

Neither woman moved. George stood stock-still for the full half minute. He wasn’t afraid. The guns weren’t loaded. As the thirty seconds came to an end and Joan still pointed the gun at him, he heard faintly from the drawing room the beginning of Elvira’s sweet and thrilling
O, taci ingiusto core
(Be silent, treacherous heart)! His own was thudding steadily. He went up to Joan, grasped the gun, and gave a sharp grunt as Eunice shot him in the neck. He fell across the table, flinging out his arms to grasp its edge, blood shooting in a fountain from the severed jugular. Joan scuttered back against the wall. With an indrawn breath, Eunice fired the second barrel into his back.

At the sound of the two shots Jacqueline sprang to her feet with a cry of alarm. “For heaven’s sake, what was that?”

“Mrs. Smith’s van backfiring,” said Melinda, and, dropping her voice because of the tape, “It always does that. There’s something wrong with the exhaust.”

“It sounded like a gun.”

“Cars backfiring do sound like guns. Sit down, Jackie, or we’ll miss this, and it’s the loveliest song of all.”

Be silent, treacherous heart. Beat not so in my breast. Elvira leaned from her window, Leporello and the Don appeared beneath it, and the great trio swelled on the two baritone voices and the soprano. Jacqueline sat down, glanced at the door. “Why doesn’t your father come back?” she said nervously.

“He’s shot the lunatic,” said Giles, “and he doesn’t know how to tell us.”

“Oh,
Giles
. Darling, go and see, would you? I can’t hear a sound.”

“Of course you can’t, Jackie, with this on,” said Melinda with asperity. “You don’t
want
to hear him bawling Parchman out, do you? All this rubbish is going to be on my tape, isn’t it?”

Jacqueline put up her hands, fluttering them in a little gesture of apology, yet of anxiety too, and Giles, who had begun languidly to raise himself from his chair, slumped back into it. From the television came the softly plucked notes of Giovanni’s mandolin.
Deh! vieni alla finestra
(Then come to the window) … Jacqueline, her hands clenched, obeyed his behest. She jumped up suddenly, went to the window on the left of the set, and parted the curtains. The tape forgotten, she cried out:

“Mrs. Smith’s van is out there! It can’t have been that we heard.”

She turned back to face them, a disgruntled Melinda, a bored, exasperated Giles. Her face was puckered with distress, and even Giles saw it, felt it, her tension and her rising fear. “I’ll go,” he sighed, beginning to shift himself very slowly like an old man with arthritis. He lounged towards the door as Joan Smith and Eunice Parchman passed from the kitchen into the passage.

“We’ll have to kill the others now,” said Eunice in the voice she used when speaking of some necessary measure, not to be postponed, such as washing a floor.

Joan, who needed no encouragement, looked back at George. He was dead, but his watch lived on, and since his death the minute hand had passed from the ten nearly to the twelve. It was almost nine o’clock. She looked back once, and then up at Eunice with a great face-splitting smile. There was blood on her hands and face and on the jumper Eunice had knitted for her. They passed into the hall and the strengthening music, music which met them with a blast of baritone voice and plucked strings as Giles opened the drawing-room door. He saw the blood and shouted out.

He shouted, “Oh, Christ!” and turned back, a split second before Joan told him to.

“Get back in there. We’ve got guns.”

Eunice was the first to follow him. A jumble of male voices singing roared in her head, and power, the chance at last to command and avenge, roared through her body. It strengthened her hands which had failed her a little back there in the kitchen. They were hard and dextrous now as she levelled the reloaded gun. Jacqueline’s face, blanched and terrified, was to her only the face which had sneered a little while handing over that Valentine. Jacqueline’s voice, screaming for her husband, was still the voice of a woman who read books and looked up from her letter writing to murmur sarcastic courtesies. In those moments the words they cried and their pleas passed over her almost unheard, and by some strange metamorphosis, produced in Eunice’s brain, they ceased to be people and became the printed word. They were those things in the bookcases, those patchy black blocks on white paper, eternally her enemies, hated and desired.

“You’d better sit down,” she said. “You’ve got it coming to you.”

Joan’s laughter cut across her words. Joan shouted something from the Bible, and then Joan fired her gun. Eunice gasped. Not because she heard the screams or saw the blood but because Joan might do it first, Joan might beat her to it. She advanced, pointing her gun. She fired both barrels, reloaded while another shot rang in her ears, and then she emptied the two barrels into what lay on the Chinese carpet.