A Little Death (28 page)

Georgie said, ‘I’ll take another powder.’ She meant the Veronal, because she had them hidden everywhere, like a squirrel with nuts. She said, ‘Take one of my powders and pour it down the sink, and then leave the paper by your bed, then you can pretend that you took it. Say you couldn’t sleep. You’ll have to call Durrant and he might ask if you heard anything. You can tell him you had your old trouble and took something for it.’ She meant from the war, because Durrant knew about that. I felt rotten lying about it, to Durrant and to the police. Small lies are always worse, I don’t know why. Straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, I suppose.

Georgie rearranged the bedclothes to look as if I had been sleeping on my own and went off to her room. I put the gloves back in the chest of drawers, then I got dressed and waited on the landing until the maid came down. The moment she saw me she knew there was something up and I told her not to let anyone go into any of our rooms until I’d spoken to the doctor. That was all I said. Then I telephoned Durrant and told him there’d been an accident. I was dreading talking to him, but it was far easier than I’d imagined. I told him I’d found Jimmy just before I telephoned. When he asked
me about Georgie, I told him she was still asleep and that I hadn’t liked to waken her in case I was wrong about Jimmy. Actually, that was rather a mistake. If Georgie had been there, awake, and if Durrant had seen her crying and all the rest of it, I’m sure he would have signed the death certificate without a second thought.

Durrant asked me if he could look in on Georgie— this was before he’d seen Jimmy’s body—and I thought it was a bit queer, but I could hardly stop him. He trotted off to her room and when he came back he said it was best to leave her to sleep. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have been surprised that Durrant wasn’t more worried about Georgie, that
she
hadn’t taken an overdose as well, but it came out at the trial that he’d just been handing out these powders and things to all his patients as if they were cigarettes, with only the vaguest idea of their strength. He retired after the trial—I think they pretty well told him he had to, but he must have been nearly seventy, so I don’t suppose it was such a terrible blow. I’d thought he’d just put ‘heart failure’ or something on the certificate and that would be the end of it, but he refused to sign the wretched thing. He kept saying it was a long time since he’d attended Jimmy and asking about symptoms and all sorts of things, and I didn’t have any answers for him. I tried to hint to him about suicide, thinking he’d be bound to do the decent thing and not report it, but that put him into a great pother and he insisted I telephone the police, otherwise he said he’d have to fetch them himself. He kept saying he had Georgie’s reputation as well as his own to think of, and talking about scandal and the letter of the law—I should think he must have wished he’d just signed and shut up when he got into court and the lawyers tore him to pieces, but of course he didn’t know it would go that far. None of us did.

Two policemen arrived and Durrant bustled downstairs and told them that Georgie was asleep and they must wait in the drawing room. They had a perfectly ridiculous conversation—I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself and I think if I’d been in less of a state of shock I would have laughed. After all, Durrant had made all this song and dance about calling the police, and now he was telling them they couldn’t see the body.

‘We must see this gentleman, sir, if he is deceased. You mentioned someone asleep, sir, who might that be?’

‘Mrs. Gresham, the deceased’s wife.’ This was Durrant.

‘Well, hadn’t she better be told, sir?’

‘No, I don’t want her disturbed.’

‘Would this be on medical grounds, sir?’

‘I don’t want her upset.’

‘Well, sir, she’ll have to know sooner or later.’

And that started Durrant off on ‘Allow me to be the best judge of that’ and there was no stopping him.

The policemen obviously thought he was quite mad. One of them took me aside and said, ‘Is there somebody deceased in the house, sir, or not?’

‘Oh, yes, upstairs, just as the doctor says.’

‘We’ll have to see for ourselves, sir, if you don’t mind.’

I thought Durrant was going to try to stop them going up the stairs by physical force, but he must have thought better of it.

Georgie stayed in her room while the policemen were upstairs. They told me that there would have to be a post-mortem examination and arranged for Jimmy’s body to be taken away. They collected up quite a lot of things from Jimmy’s study and the dressing room, and
took them. When I saw them examining the dressing room, I suddenly realised that the doorknob had Georgie’s fingermarks all over it. The prosecution lawyer, Anthony Keeble-Price, suggested she’d forgotten to wipe them off, because of course there was all this other palaver about the whisky. They couldn’t understand why the decanter was empty, you see, because they analysed the contents of Jimmy’s stomach and there wasn’t any alcohol in it, or in the vomit, and one of the maids had said that she’d filled up the decanter during the day, so they assumed that someone must have drunk it. Keeble-Price said Georgie’d been in Jimmy’s dressing room with him, and
she’d
drunk the whisky and then washed the glass and the tray and everything so that no one would know. It never occurred to him that someone might be mad enough to pour good Scotch down the sink, but of course that was my own stupid fault. Actually, Old Spencer gave me quite a laugh with that point—he told the court that Georgie’s fingerprints were bound to be on the dressing-room door, because ‘those of you who rejoice in a felicitous state of matrimony will allow it quite natural for a wife to enter her husband’s dressing room at such times when his valet is not present.’ Priceless! Knocked the jury completely for six—you could tell they didn’t have the first clue what he was talking about.

The police managed to get rid of Dr. Durrant in the end, and they went back to the drawing room and sat there until Georgie came down. It was quite a wait they had, too: over an hour before she appeared. Durrant had left something for Georgie to take to pep her up a bit—Lord knows what it was, but it certainly made her eyes shine; she was fidgeting about in her chair and chattering away to these policemen as if she’d known them all her life. She wasn’t herself at all, although they
weren’t to know that, and I think her behaviour made them suspicious, because she didn’t seem in the least upset about Jimmy.

The week before Georgie’s arrest was dreadful. I didn’t know what to say to people in the office. I couldn’t even tell them about the funeral, because the police wouldn’t let us have Jimmy’s body. Georgie and I knew very well what the results of the post-mortem would be, but I think we were still hoping for a miracle—that they’d find he’d had a heart attack or something. But there wasn’t any doubt about it: Apparently, choral hydrate has a very particular smell even when it’s inside the stomach, and you can’t mistake it for anything else. I don’t know if it was Durrant’s pep pills, but Georgie was very strange during that time. She wasn’t behaving like a mad person, not talking to herself or anything, but she insisted on having every single newspaper delivered and she spent the whole day lying on her bed, looking for anything about James and cutting it out with her nail scissors. If she found a newspaper that hadn’t run anything, she would tell Jones to return it to the shop and ask for the money back. When I came home in the evening she’d read me the cuttings, but it was as if she were reading a society column, not something about a man she’d been married to for nearly twenty years.

The servants brought up food on trays, but Georgie never ate it. I’d tell her to eat, but she wouldn’t even pick up her knife and fork. She’d say, ‘Oh, no, darling, I’ll have a cigarette instead.’ She’d never been particularly interested in smoking, but she’d take a cigarette from the box and I’d light it for her, and then she’d put it out almost immediately and ask for another five minutes later. I think she almost didn’t care about what was going to happen, as long as she could lounge on the bed
in her pyjamas, with newspapers spread out all over the room, clothes draped everywhere, sherry glasses, ashtrays, chaos—she was in her element. I begged her to let Jones in, or at least Ada, to tidy up the place, but she absolutely refused. She wouldn’t even speak to them.

I asked Georgie at one point, ‘Did you love Jimmy?’

She wouldn’t give me a proper answer. ‘Don’t be boring, Edmund.’

I wasn’t sure what to take from that, so I said, ‘Why did you marry him?’

She laughed and said, ‘Well, I couldn’t marry you, could I?’

The night before the police came, she said, ‘Can I come to your room, Edmund? It doesn’t make any difference now.’

We both knew it must only be a matter of one or two days, so I said, ‘Suppose they find us together?’

‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll be awake before they come.’ So I let her. I don’t think we slept much, just sat together and held hands.

It’s very strange, how things happen. When they came and took her away, they said I wasn’t allowed to see her until the following day and I just didn’t know what to do. It should have been the worst day of my life and in a way it was, during the daylight hours, anyway. But in the evening something quite wonderful happened. I was in the dining room—I’d fairly well given up eating and was smoking myself silly instead, when the door opened and in walked Louisa. We’d had the most terrible rainstorm and she was soaking wet, but she looked absolutely beautiful. She said, ‘I wouldn’t let Ada tell you I’d arrived. I thought you wouldn’t see me if you knew.’ Well, I couldn’t think of anything to say— I mean, there were all sorts of things I wanted to say. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her, but of
course I couldn’t do it so I put my jacket round her shoulders, and there she was, patting her hair with a towel, and she just looked up at me. She didn’t speak, but her hair had gone into wisps where she was rubbing it dry and I suddenly stopped thinking about Georgie and the whole, awful
shambles
of it, and all I could think of was what a miracle it was she was there.

I said, ‘Does Davy know you’re here?’

She said, ‘Davy’s in Scotland. Nobody knows where I am except you.’

We went through into the drawing room, and she kicked off her shoes and sat on one of the sofas and drank brandy. ‘Edmund, I don’t know what to say. What a dreadful mistake. I’m sure it can be sorted out, but how dreadful for Georgie…’ Then she caught my eye and said, ‘It
is
a mistake, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I don’t understand why it’s happened.’

‘I suppose the police have to accuse somebody in cases like this. People always want someone to be guilty, don’t they? They can’t seem to believe that accidents can happen… I’m glad I don’t think like that, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose so. Louisa, may I ask you something?’

‘Anything you like. You might be disappointed if you want next year’s Derby winner, though.’

‘Would you talk to me about Freddie?’

‘Your brother Freddie?’

‘I’m beginning to think I’ve just imagined having a brother, because nobody ever mentions him.’

I thought Louisa was going to change the subject, but she said, ‘We used to call him Georgie’s shadow. He was always following her around, repeating things she said.’

‘I don’t remember that… Louisa, what happened on the day he died?’

‘Well, my father told us that one of the servants had killed him, a young girl. He said she was insane. I remember thinking that it must have been the girl who took us to see Freddie, because she was shouting and spitting and obviously quite mad. She came up to us and grabbed Georgie and dragged her away. We all followed, and she went round a corner and there was poor Freddie lying on the grass, face down. I didn’t see properly. I saw some blood and then I couldn’t bring myself to look after that. I was looking at Georgie’s face all the time, because I didn’t want to look at Freddie, and she never took her eyes off him. She just stared, she didn’t even blink. She must have had the most dreadful nightmares.’

‘Did you have nightmares?’

‘Yes, a bit. We’d been playing hide-and-seek, and I used to dream about going to look for Freddie, and knowing I had to find him quickly before something terrible happened, and then finding him behind the hedge. I got over it, though. Children do. They forget things. Roland and I never talked about it. Father told us that we shouldn’t and I don’t think it occurred to either of us that we
could
talk about it, really.’

‘But we’re talking about it now, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, I suppose we are. You know, Edmund, I’ve often wondered—as an adult, I mean, not when I was a child—whether your father didn’t blame Georgie for Freddie’s death.’

‘For causing it, do you mean?’

‘No, not for that, but for not… looking after him. Making sure he stayed with us.’

‘He can’t have done. That was Nurse’s job, not Georgie’s.’

‘I just thought perhaps your father said something to
her and she rather took it to heart. After all, she was only eight years old.’

‘Did Georgie tell you this?’

‘Of course not! Would you tell something like that, if it were you?’

‘Well, I might tell you, because I trust you.’

‘Yes, but Georgie doesn’t trust me. I don’t think she trusts anybody, does she? Edmund, I’m just
guessing and
it’s probably all nonsense, but didn’t you ever think there must have been some particular reason for her and your father to be at loggerheads? Those things don’t happen by accident. Georgie and your father, they were each as bad as the other. The type that gets an idea into his or her head and won’t let go of it, and when they come up against anything that refutes that idea they just pretend it doesn’t exist. Remember, Georgie was awfully isolated and if one has too much time to think about these sorts of things, one gets dreadfully sensitive and morbid.’

Then I asked her what I’d asked Georgie: ‘Why did you marry Davy?’

It was rather funny, because she gave me almost the same answer. ‘Well, you didn’t ask me, did you?’ At first I thought she must be making a joke, so I started laughing, but then I saw that she wasn’t laughing, so I stopped. She said, ‘I always hoped you might, but I could never quite believe that you would.’