Some Deaths Before Dying (23 page)

“Have a drink,” he said. “Then tell me what happened, if you can.”

She sipped. The bite of the scotch pierced her numbness.

“I was doing the Christmas cards. He just came in. He said you’d asked him to come up and tell me you’d be late home. He said
you’d given him a key. I knew he was lying. But he kept saying you were a very good friend of his. He wasn’t lying about that.
Jocelyn, I knew what he meant.”

She’d tried to speak in the same automaton voice she’d used with the young man, but it wouldn’t hold true. She found she was
crying. She put her other hand over his, and he responded by doing the same.

“I’ve just got this to say,” she sobbed. “It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be … as all right as it can be. Whatever
happens, you are still my only darling …”

“And you are mine.”

“I suppose we’d better call the police.”

“No. Go on, if you can.”

“Well, we talked for a bit. I wasn’t frightened. I was furious—much worse than furious—I’ve never felt like that about anyone
or anything. But I was sort of numb too. He had one of your cigarettes and a drink—Marsala and bitter lemon. He gave me some
scotch. I took him to the kitchen and made him a ham sandwich. We came back to the study. He had another cigarette. He decided
to keep the lighter, the one Flora and Jack gave you. He said you’d like him to have it. Then he found the ammunition for
the pistols. He didn’t know what it was. I told him about the pistols—he was going to find them anyway. He said you’d like
him to have them too. I decided to stop him, I didn’t know how, but he was playing around with them, and that gave me an idea.
I said he’d need to know how to load them, and I pretended to show him. I made him copy what I was doing. When I’d got my
gun loaded I shot him. I don’t know what happened after that. I must have locked the study door. I waited in the hall till
the Ransons came back, because I didn’t want him coming to tell me they were in. Then I came to meet you. I think that’s all.”

“All right. Let me think.”

She waited for at least ten minutes while he concentrated, sipping his drink. At last he nodded and put his glass down.

“All right. I think that’s the best we can do,” he said. “First, I’ve got to ask you this. Are you really sure about what
you said just now—I mean that you want to stick with me—in spite of what I am? I don’t think I can change that. I would like
to, for both our sakes, but I don’t believe it’s possible.”

“I thought about it while I was waiting for you. Yes. I’m quite sure.”

“There’s not enough I can say, so I won’t try. If you want to, we’ll talk about it later. And if you want me to go and see
psychiatrists and so on.”

“Like spinach.”

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘Filthy stuff, but I’ll get it down somehow,’ ” she quoted. “You healed yourself after Cambi Road, darling. I think that
for my sake you would heal yourself from this if you could, and if you can’t then I don’t believe anyone else can help you.”

“Well, we’ll think about it later. What I want you to do now is to go to bed. Do everything you would on any other evening
but don’t go to sleep. I’ll be up in about three quarters of an hour.”

“There’s nothing I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so.”

He rose, picking up the decanter and siphon.

“Oh, put these glasses in the kitchen on your way up, as if you’d taken them in from the study.”

“What about his? It’ll have his fingerprints on it, won’t it?”

“Everything’s going to have to be wiped down. I’ve just got to get the timing right. Off you go, now.”

She did as she was told, taking as long as possible about everything. There was no hope of any book holding her mind, but
she opened the Angela Thirkell she’d been reading and sat in bed, her eyes scanning the lines, her hands turning the pages,
but not a word going in. She refused to look at the clock.

Eventually Jocelyn appeared, came round the bed to kiss her, and started to undress, talking quietly as he did so.

“All right. In a few minutes we’re going to smell burning. I’m going down to investigate. I’ll yell for you. You put on your
dressing-gown and slippers and come down. I’ll tell you to go and fetch Ranson and tell him there’s a fire in the study, and
then to call the fire brigade. You’re up to that?”

“I think so.”

She watched him go rapidly through his full bedtime ritual, glancing every now and then at his wristwatch. He climbed into
bed beside her, put on his reading glasses and picked up his book. He actually seemed to read a page before he said, “That
should about do it. We don’t want to burn the house down.”

Without apparent hurry he got up, stepped into his slippers, picked up his dressing-gown and left, putting it on as he went.
With the door open, Rachel caught the whiff of burning.

She did what she would naturally have done in such a case, getting up and following him as far as the top of the stairs. She
could hear his footsteps racing down the short flights. His shout rose.

“Ray! Ray! Quick!”

She kicked off her stupid slippers and ran. He was outside the study, with a soaked tea-towel covering his face. He had one
of the red extinguishers in his hand. Smoke was pluming out under the door.

“Wake Ranson,” he said. “Tell him to cover his face with a wet cloth, get an extinguisher and come here. Then call the fire
brigade.”

She met Ranson hurrying down the back stairs in his night clothes. She told him what to do, ran and called the brigade from
the hall, and then fetched the extinguisher from the gun room at the end of the north corridor and ran with it to the study.
Ranson was crouched at the doorway, masked like Jocelyn, directing the jet from his extinguisher into the room. Clouds of
smoke and steam streamed out over his head. Crouching beneath them she reached the door.

“Here’s a spare,” she said. “Where’s the Colonel?”

“Over by the window. I think we’re winning. This muck is mostly steam. Looks like a spark must’ve somehow got into the wastepaper
basket.”

“Out of the way,” called Jocelyn—loud, but not a shout—a command.

A moment later he came crouching through the door, choking and gasping.

“Mine’s empty. I’ll … Ah, you’ve got it—good for you. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Try not to get it on my Christmas cards!”

The mess was merely smouldering by the time the firemen came tramping in to inspect the embers and splash a bit more water
around. The patch of carpet where the body had lain was burned right through. The whole room was smeared with smoke, and reeked
appallingly. The front of Rachel’s worktable was scorched, the envelopes, cards and remaining photographs discoloured. The
stack she had completed was gone. Dully she opened the low cupboard behind her chair to inspect her cameras. Several, all
her best ones, were not in their places.

She found the cards out on the post table in the hall, where she would naturally have left them. Was it conceivable that she
had actually put them there, in that first long blank period after she had fired the shot? The cameras were in her darkroom.
True, she might sometimes leave one, or possibly two there, but not five. Jocelyn must have done that. But at no point, except
for once next morning, did he say anything to suggest that the fire had been other than an accident, or that the young man
had been there at all.

She knew that if she had wanted to talk about what had become of him he would have done his best to comply, but she didn’t
want—indeed, if he had offered she would have declined. That world was gone. She must learn to live contentedly in this diminished
one.

The following morning, then.

Mrs. Ranson brought their tray up as if nothing special had happened. They agreed with her verdict that it was a mercy Rachel
had smelt the fire so that the men could get to it in time. Rachel sat up in bed sipping her tea, while Jocelyn stalked half
dressed round the room, as he did every morning, fiddling with objects and adjusting them to the precise positions he preferred.

“I’m going to have to go to London,” he said suddenly. “It’ll take me about three days. I don’t want you here alone.”

“I can’t come with you?”

“Afraid not. No. You’d better go to Jack and Flora if they can have you.”

“What shall we tell them?”

“That you’re upset about the fire, and you want to be out of the way while the worst of the mess is cleaned up.”

“No. That’s not me. I’d stay and cope.”

“I suppose so.”

He rattled a breath out between fluttered lips.

“Right,” he said. “It’s not just the fire. The reason I have to go back to London is that we’ve been very badly let down by
Fish Stadding. There should have been about thirty-six thousand pounds in the Association funds. It looks as if there’s only
a few hundred.”

“Fish! Is that true? Are you sure?”

“Yes. It looks as if he’s been playing fast and loose with some of his clients’ money—people I’d put him on to in the first
place. Gerry St. Looe was beginning to ask questions. Fish needed to come up with the money fast, so he took what he could
get at. We were bound to find out in a month or so, but it was a breathing space—only it wasn’t.”

“But Leila’s rolling!”

“Was rolling, at a guess. He’ll have gone through all that.”

“Oh, God! Fish! What about Leila? And Anne and Simon …? Oh, Jocelyn!”

“This only came up yesterday. That’s why I had to hang on in London, to see what Fish had to say about it. The answer wasn’t
very satisfactory.”

“What on earth can I say to Leila? Does she even know yet?”

“I don’t suppose Fish has said a word to her. I was going to tell you about this, of course, until … anyway, I don’t want
it going any further than Flora, and Jack. But that and the fire—do you think it’s enough reason for you to go to Flora?”

“Well, I’d want to talk to her anyway, about how we can help Anne …”

“If she’ll let herself be helped … All right, then?”

“I suppose so. But be as quick as you can, darling. Be as quick as you can.”

“Do my best,” he said, half absently, his mind already busy with necessary plans. But then he put down the stick of never
used sealing wax he’d been rearranging on the pen tray, and came and squatted by the bed and took her hand in both of his.

“I need you too, you know,” he said.

During his absence Jocelyn called her every day, but naturally couldn’t speak of anything of importance on the telephone.
After four days he came to Froggatt in the Rover to take her home. There was a large strip of sticking plaster on his left
cheek, just above the jaw line.

“Darling! What have you done to yourself!”

“It’s not as bad as it looks. I was in Victoria Street waiting to cross, when a damned light lorry swung round the corner,
right in the gutter, going a real lick, and a loose end of lashing whipped out and caught me. Just took the skin off, but
I bled all over my jacket.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t want you to worry.”

There was a brief family conference about Fish Stadding. It looked as if over the years he had run through Leila’s once considerable
fortune, and had taken the Cambi Road Association funds in an attempt to recoup by speculating in titanium options. (It later
turned out that he had also taken out a mortgage and second mortgage on their house. That money was also gone.) Fish himself
seemed to have disappeared, taking anything that was left.

The immediate problem was Anne’s wedding to Simon Stadding, due in six weeks’ time, with a big reception at Forde Place. Should
this be reduced or postponed, or could it conceivably go ahead as planned, with Fish himself mysteriously absent? Jocelyn
had spoken with several members of the Association’s committee, and the general inclination was to hush the matter up, partly
for Leila’s sake, but largely because Fish had been with them on Cambi Road: not that they were inclined to forgive him for
what he had done—the opposite, if anything—but because that made even this betrayal something between themselves. Legal action
wouldn’t recover their money, merely expose their shame. So the question was whether Fish’s absence from his son’s wedding
was likely to produce less questioning comment than the other possible courses of action.

“We’ll have to talk to Anne and Simon, anyway,” said Rachel. “And Leila, of course. I’ll ring her as soon as I get home. I
would anyway. I’m worried sick for her.”

“There’s no point in talking to Anne,” said Flora. “She’ll just bite our heads off. But Jack gets on pretty well with Simon.
He could—”

“I think I’d better have a word with Simon,” said Jocelyn.

On the way home he and Rachel talked mainly about Leila, and what could be done for her, and Anne’s need for a more generous
settlement now that nothing would be coming from Simon’s side.

The call to Leila proved extremely painful. She was distraught almost to the point of insanity, and furious, but not with
Fish, with anybody and everybody else but Fish. Jocelyn and the “Cambi Road gang” in particular. Fish certainly hadn’t done
what they seemed to be saying he’d done, and why weren’t people who were supposed to be his friends standing up for him, and
so on. Rachel barely got a word in. Her attempts at sympathy and consolation were brushed aside in the tirade. There was no
possibility of discussing the wedding date. The conversation ended with Leila sobbing wildly and slamming the handset down.

“I’ll have a word with Simon when the dust’s settled a bit,” said Jocelyn.

All this Rachel dealt with just as she would have if the young man had never come to Forde Place. From minor anxieties such
as Jocelyn’s accident with the lorry, to the near-agony of her call to Leila, her reactions were, so to speak, “normal.” During
her four days at Froggatt she had occasionally found herself slipping through into that parallel universe with its slightly
different history, in which she had been sitting at her table, alone in the house, and sensed the movement of the study door,
and turned … but she had already learnt to recognise the moment of slippage and to will herself not to let it happen, just
as, with recurrent nightmares, one learns to recognise when one reaches it the rocky hillside halfway up which one is going
to look back and see that one is pursued, and by what, and so wakes oneself before one sets foot on the path, and then, wakeful,
has only the foreshudderings of horror to deal with, not the horror itself. Now Rachel was able to use these discussions,
these “normal” reactions and emotions, as present, this-universe realities, to cover over and solidify, layer upon layer,
the surface beneath which lay those pits of slippage, until this universe became the only one there was.