Some Deaths Before Dying (22 page)

“You’re taking this pretty cool,” he said. “I mean me just walking in.”

“It’s interesting to meet one of my husband’s London friends,” she said. The absence of emotional colouring made the words
seem to hang there, waiting for him to decide how to take them.

He lost patience.

“’My husband’s London friends,’ ” he jeered. “I suppose you think you know what I’m talking about.”

“Yes,” she said.

He took a couple of paces forward and stared down at her, leaning his knuckles on the table. She looked up at him, unafraid.
There was nothing more he could do to her now.

“Bugger me!” he said quietly. “I don’t get it. There was a fat old cow across the road when I was a kid. Been a housemaid
or something in big houses, back before the first war, she had, full of stories about life among the nobs, Lord this having
it off nine ways with Lady that, and her husband not giving a fuck because he was going with a lot of stable lads. ‘Don’t
you take no notice of her,’ my ma told me. ‘It’s only stories.’”

“Do you want anything to eat?” said Rachel.

He took a look at the tray, sniffed the cheese and made a face.

“There’s some ham in the kitchen,” said Rachel. “I could make you a ham sandwich.”

“What about the servants? He said there’d be servants.”

“It’s their evening out. They won’t be back until ten.”

“All right. Got any pickles?”

“I expect so.”

All that Rachel could recover from the time in the kitchen was an image of the cooking knives in the jar beside the salt-pot
and the scales, and the thought drifting through her strangely will-less mind, Perhaps I could kill him with one of those.

Then they were back in the study, under the ugly, dull illumination of the overhead light. She was at her table again, and
he half perched on the edge of Jocelyn’s desk, munching. On the plate beside him were the discarded crusts of his sandwiches
and a yellow smear of pickle sauce. A fresh cigarette lay on the ashtray, smoke curling up from its tip. He must have helped
himself to more Marsala, neat—the glass was half full and the liquid unclouded. He was looking at Jocelyn’s lighter, with
his initials on it, a thank-you present from Flora and Jack after their wedding.

“Nice,” he said. “He’d like me to have that, wouldn’t he? Something to remember him by.”

“If you like,” she said, indifferent.

His eyes widened. Perhaps he had been expecting at least a token resistance. He smiled and dropped the lighter into his coat
pocket. His confidence was returning. No doubt the Marsala helped. Rachel wondered whether he would become drunk enough to
attack her, and if that would be enough to rouse her from her apathy. Part of her seemed to stand outside herself and consider
the question. Probably not, she concluded. She watched him rise, walk round the desk, and sit in Jocelyn’s chair. The stimulus
of pure anger returned, but there was no eruption. He tried the drawers and found the centre and top left ones locked.

“Where’s the key, then?”

“On my husband’s key ring.”

He nodded, apparently assured that she was too tamed to lie to him, and tried the others. The ones he could open contained
little to interest him—writing paper, envelopes, stamps, account books—but from the lowest on the right he pulled out a flat
hinged box, opened it, and frowned.

“What’s this, then?”

“The ammunition for my husband’s antique pistols.”

“Pistols, now. Where?”

“On the lower shelf of the table beside you.”

He reached down, lifted out the rosewood box, laid it on the desk and opened it.

“Hey! Now that’s something!” he said.

He picked out one of the pistols and aimed it at her, grinning. She saw that he was younger than she’d thought. He was a boy,
playing with a toy gun.

He switched his aim to other targets, the fire, the portraits of Jocelyn’s parents, the fox’s mask beside the window. When
he pulled the trigger there was no answering click, as the gun wasn’t cocked. He put it back in the box and took out the other
one, turning it to and fro to study the details. The neat movement of his fingers demonstrated his respect and admiration
for the object, something like Rachel herself felt for her favourite cameras.

“Got his initials on them, too,” he said. “Only they got to be older than that. His dad’s, were they?”

“No. They belonged to a man called Joachim Murat. He was one of Napoleon’s generals. The pistols are about a hundred and fifty
years old.”

“You don’t say!”

No mockery now. He seemed genuinely impressed. Rachel could imagine a young man of her own class—one of Dick’s friends, say—reacting
less appropriately. He looked up, and his manner reverted.

“Now that’s something Joss’d really want me to have,” he suggested. “To remember him by, you know? Seeing I’ve been a good
friend to him.”

Anger found leverage at last. Her will woke and controlled it, letting her answer in the same dead tone.

“I don’t know.”

He picked up the other pistol and fought an imaginary skirmish, two-handed, gunning down half a dozen outlaws in rapid succession.

“You’d need to reload between shots,” said Rachel.

“Yeah,” he said absently, whirling to take a snap shot at the half-caste creeping up behind him.

“Shall I show you how?” said Rachel.

“Oh. Right you are. No, you stay where you are, lady.”

He came round the desk with the box and handed her one of the pistols. She picked one of the slugs out of its nest, then put
it back.

“We’d better not use these,” she said. “They’re the original ones, and the paper on the cartridges is very fragile. Will you
bring me the other box? Thank you. If you just watch what I do, and copy me, so you know how. You’ve got the right-hand gun,
by the way—it’s a little bit heavier. Now you need a slug, and a cartridge and a cap.”

She picked out of their compartments two of the elongated lead pellets, about three eighths of an inch in diameter and twice
that long, with one end rounded and the other flat; two of the cartridges, tubes of thick waxed paper pinched shut at one
end and with a brass base at the other; and from individual slots in the third compartment two caps, squat copper cones with
a nipple at the point.

“First you fit the cap into this pit at the bottom of the cartridge. It goes in pointed end first, like this. That’s right.
Put it down carefully. They can go off at the slightest tap. Now, you have your own loading rod and mallet. Here. You move
this catch up—it’s on a spring and fairly stiff—and break the gun open. That’s right. Hold the barrel in your left hand, pointing
downwards. Now drop the slug in, pointed end first. Look and check that it’s sitting centrally. Put the loading rod into the
breech, this end first—you’ll find it just fits—and give it a tap with the mallet. Again—I don’t think that was quite hard
enough. That’s to seat the slug into the rifling. Now drop the cartridge in on top of it, this way round, and push it down
with your thumb until you can feel it’s flush with the rim of the breech. Let me see. Yes, that’s right. Now close the breech—do
it firmly, so that the catch clicks. No, take your finger off the trigger. Lay it along the trigger guard, like this. Now
with your left hand—you can do it with your thumb, but it’s safer to use both hands—cock the gun. That’s this lever here.
Check that it’s all the way back …”

While he lowered his glance to make the unnecessary inspection she aimed her own gun at his chest and fired.

* * *

Another gap, but of a different nature, because even at the time there had been no memory to fill it. Nothing between the
jar of the explosion and her becoming aware of herself sitting in the dark of the hall, shuddering as if with extreme cold.
She rose, felt her way to the cupboard and fetched out coats, choosing them by touch, her own camel-hair, which she put on,
and Jocelyn’s big raglan, which she heaped over herself when she huddled back into the armchair. The movements had been awkward
because all the while she had been clutching a hard object in her left hand—the key to the study. That told her why she was
here. She was waiting for the lights of the Triumph to sweep across the windows as it took the bend of the drive when the
Ransons came home. She would then go down to the back yard and tell them to leave the car out for her to take to the station
to meet the Colonel.

There was a taste of cheese in her mouth. She could remember everything that had happened up to the moment she had fired the
shot. Her supper tray had remained untouched at the end of the desk, apart from the young man picking up the cheese and sniffing
it. She seemed to have no horror of what she had done, but the fact that she must then have felt hungry enough to eat the
cheese he had handled struck her as very strange. Strange, but satisfying.

The sequence repeated itself, she didn’t know how many times—the waking, the shuddering cold despite the coats, the key, realisation
she was waiting for the Ransons to return, the mouth’s memory of cheese …

Another gap, and then she found herself driving into the station car park and choosing a place well beyond the buildings so
that she could be sure of seeing the train come in. She didn’t remember speaking to the Ransons, but in her mind’s ear was
a kind of echo of her own voice, sounding brisk and normal. She must also have driven here. Some part of her mind, disconnected,
must have seen to all that.

Perhaps not wholly disconnected, because the thought came to her that she dare not wait in the car, as she’d planned, in case
she was in one of her blanks when the train arrived. She got out, went into the station, buying a platform ticket from the
machine by the gate, and paced up and down the platform, frowning at the clock sometimes as she passed it, but unable to calculate
how long it still was until twelve past eleven.

A porter emerged from a door, saw and recognised her.

“London train’s not for another forty minutes, Mrs. Matson.”

“Yes, I know. I misread my watch and came an hour early, so I thought I’d wait.”

“It’s getting parky out here. Be a frost by morning, I shouldn’t wonder. Look, there’s a nice fire in the porters’ room. We’re
not supposed to, but it’s only two of us on, and seeing it’s you …”

“I was afraid of falling asleep if I waited in the car. And my husband doesn’t know I’m meeting him.”

“You’ll be all right in our room. There’s a bell goes off like the crack of doom when it passes the signal box.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

The blank this time less absolute. Something like warmth beginning to invade her body, something like coherence attempting
to piece her mind together as the forlorn minutes dawdled away. Actual thoughts about her situation. One certainty—that she
loved, wanted, needed Jocelyn, and always would. An absurdity—that at least it wasn’t some other woman. A possible way of
thinking and feeling about him: Belinda Daring’s cousin the archdeacon, was married to a woman who couldn’t help swearing,
wild streams of obscenity, provoked by nothing, in public. Otherwise a pleasant, kind woman, apparently—Rachel hadn’t met
her—but with this debilitating tic. There was a name for it, somebody’s syndrome. Her husband, his colleagues, her own friends,
the parish, simply ignored it among themselves, but led her out when it happened among strangers … Perhaps Rachel might school
herself to do the same, to treat what was happening to Jocelyn as merely an unpleasant and embarrassing ailment, but not despicable
or degrading because not his fault, being beyond his power to control … It would be hard, hard almost to the point of despair,
an uncovenanted doubling of the price she had paid for having him home, but still, bitterly, worth it.

The bell. The clarity of full recall. She rose and went to wait by the barrier. Blotches of light and dark along the platform.
The thud of the big diesel. The train itself invisible, and then a sudden loom in the darkness when it was almost in. Its
slowing rumble along the platform. Arms reaching through windows to turn the handles, the doors swinging open, tired men getting
down, their feet finding the still moving platform from habit. Others after the train had halted, not many at this late hour.
Jocelyn, unmistakable the moment he emerged, signalling for the porter and then turning to help somebody with suitcases. An
elderly couple climbing down to join him.

He spoke briefly with them, tipped his hat in farewell and strode towards her, gesturing to the porter as he passed to show
where he was needed.

“Hello, I said not to trouble. This is … What’s up?”

“I can’t tell you here.”

He took her by the arm and led her out.

In the darkness by the car she stopped him with a touch, turned him, put her arms round him, laid her head against his shoulder
and sobbed. He asked no questions, but hefted his briefcase onto the roof of the car and held her close, smoothing the back
of her head with his right hand. She remembered standing like this, in the early days of the war, outside the ward where Anne
lay moaning with rheumatic fever, and the crass consultant had offered them nothing but self-important mystifications.

When she was ready she gave him the key of the car. The Triumph was hers, but if they were together it was always he who drove.
He still asked nothing, and she sat drawn into herself, unable to think how to tell him. He didn’t drive down to the yard
but stopped at the front door, which he opened with the key on his ring. Still she waited until she was forced to speak, having
led him by the wrist to the study door and put the key into his hand.

“There’s a man in there,” she said. “I think he’s dead. I shot him with my Ladurie. I don’t know his name, but he said he
was a friend of yours. He called you Joss. He had a key to the house.”

Jocelyn took a slow breath and nodded, but made no other move. He must have stood a good minute—more—before he turned, said,
“Wait here,” unlocked the door and went in, closing it behind him. He came out, it seemed to Rachel, almost at once, carrying
the whisky decanter and a siphon. He handed the siphon to Rachel, relocked the door and led the way to the dining room. There
were glasses in the sideboard. He poured two drinks, put them on the table, pulled out a chair and settled her into it, then
sat cornerwise across from her. He took her right hand in his left and held it.