The Courtesy of Death (6 page)

At my exclamation Aviston-Tresco turned round, looked me straight in the eyes with a most kindly expression—not at all the spontaneous consternation that one would expect—and
said:

‘I am so sorry this had to happen.’

Right or wrong, memory of the apology instantly connected me to the emergency station. I leapt out of that van and ran round a couple of corners, vanishing into a near-by public lavatory which I
had several times found useful. It seemed very unlikely that a really damaging quantity of any drug could be injected by a casual, deep puncture, but a culture of God knows what nastiness could. I
vividly remembered two cases of fulminating blood-poisoning in a rain-forest camp, caused by mere scratches. Shutting the door behind me, I pulled out my pocket knife and cut a gash two inches long
and half an inch deep across the point of entry—which, since there was no mirror, I could only distinguish by touch.

A broken spring. No doubt there was one. And no doubt some other sharpness, now removed, had been ingeniously attached to it. Whatever was intended to happen to me as a result of sitting down
heavily and incautiously in a vet’s working van would have been accepted by me and everyone else as a regrettable accident.

It wasn’t going to happen to me if I could possibly help it. I shot out of the lavatory, waved down a passing car and asked to be taken to the nearest doctor. I probably looked pale and I
certainly looked agitated. The long-haired young fellow who was driving did not hesitate. He was not the sort of person who refuses to be involved in unpleasantness. It’s conceivable that his
own activities were not always legal. At any rate he was a fortunate choice.

I tried to keep my backside well away from him, but he noticed the stain spreading on my trouser leg.

‘Sit on that, cock!’ he said, folding up a bit of waste. ‘We’ll be there in five minutes. Not to worry!’

He drove me fast into the shabbier part of Westbourne Grove and rang a doctor’s bell. As soon as the door opened, he cleared off discreetly with a cheerful wave.

The doctor was a youngish man and none too cordial. He was, I think, in the middle of his dinner and his surgery was closed. However, he opened the place up promptly enough when he realised that
I was in need of first aid, and I was glad to see that it appeared the last word in hygiene and equipment.

‘This is very urgent,’ I told him. ‘I want you to treat me as if I were in danger of anthrax or any other plague you can think of common to animals and men.’

‘Let me mix you a little something first,’ he said.

I snapped at him that I did not need a tranquilliser and was perfectly sane.

‘Imagine I’m a wounded gangster,’ I said, ‘and hurry!’

I pulled down my pants, increasing his alarm, and showed him what I had done to myself.

‘I ripped that open with a pocket knife. It ought to prove to you that I believe the risk to be serious. I want deep disinfecting and whatever antibiotic you think I should
have.’

‘We can probably get along with anti-tetanus to start with,’ he said, still doubting me.

‘Don’t need it! I’m a mining engineer and up to date with my injections. You say it, I’ve had it.’

‘How about bubonic plague?’ he asked with a half smile—to find out, I think, whether my reaction would be hysterical or not.

‘It could be. But if it was I should think it’s washed out. I made that gash within two minutes of the puncture.’

He had me face downwards on the operating table at once.

‘Girls on the Underground and so forth,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of such things. But the damage one can do without a syringe is pretty limited if dealt with immediately. And
you did, and I’m going to. This will hurt.’

He was right. And the slow injection he gave me afterwards felt like half a pint of liquid.

When I was reclining on side and elbow, very shaky but ‘comfortable’ as they call it, he said:

‘I gather you think this was attempted murder. Shall I call the police for you?’

I gave it some consideration. I could not offer the police any motive or any proof that the prick was not an accident. Aviston-Tresco, a respectable, much esteemed professional man, could show
me up as panicking like a hen just because he might once have seemed a little sinister when he called on me in the middle of the night. As for the seat spring or nail or whatever it was, I had no
doubt that it was still innocently projecting and that inspection would reveal nothing whatever on its tip.

‘I can’t prove a thing,’ I said.

‘You mentioned diseases common to animals and man. I think that between us we have avoided any risk of anthrax and psittacosis. But hadn’t you better have a course of injections for
rabies?’

I replied that I did not believe there was a chance of it. For one thing, an English vet would never have seen a case; for another, there would be headlines, enquiries and quarantines all over
the country. And what was the use of giving me a disease which would appear three weeks later?

Assuming that I had not imagined the whole thing, Aviston-Tresco wanted me out of the way because he was at last dead sure that I had learned something I shouldn’t from Fosworthy. Speed
was therefore essential. Within a few days anthrax—a wild guess—or some virulent form of septicaemia—more likely—would get me down and finish me promptly. If I never
suspected that he had tried to kill me, he could sit tight. If I did come to suspect the car seat and did from my hospital bed accuse him, he was still safe. He could quite openly accept the
babblings of high fever with horror and even admit that his far from sterile van might be responsible.

Having stitched up and plastered my backside, this now most friendly young doctor told me to come back for more injections the following day. That turned out to be impossible, and for some time
I could only hope that his ministrations had done the trick. Although I was very fully occupied, there were slack hours when imagination was inclined to get out of hand and I would wonder what my
temperature was.

I had something to eat—standing up—took a taxi home and limped up the stairs to my first-floor flat, asking myself why I had been so blasted courageous or cowardly in dealing with a
scratch. And there, sitting on the steps which led up to the next landing, was Barnabas Fosworthy peacefully reading a book.

He shut it, got up and almost embraced me. With his shy smile, always more effective in inspiring affection than confidence, he whispered mysteriously:

‘I have not been followed.’

I made no comment on that. He wouldn’t have known it if half Somerset had trailed him up the street. I let him in and locked the door.

‘I fear you have done yourself a mischief,’ he said.

I replied that it was just a painful touch of sciatica—for there was no point yet in telling him what had happened—and asked where he had been since he vanished from Hammersmith.

‘Bristol,’ he answered. ‘I came to impart to you that, though remaining in concealment, I have been able to press my suit. I knew you would be so delighted.’

Incredible! I resisted the impulse to point out that the tweed he always wore would not hold a crease.

‘It was received?’

‘With courtesy and charming reserve.’

‘Splendid!’

‘And I shall need your help.’

No doubt he took my broad grin as sympathetic. Actually I had been struck by vague echoes of Bertie Wooster.

‘In what way?’

‘I wondered if you knew a woman of the utmost respectability.’

‘Possibly,’ I replied. ‘But I might be wrong. Why?’

‘Miss Cynthia Carlis has appeared at my hotel. A chaperone is essential. I should not wish a breath of suspicion to rest upon her.’

‘But, for God’s sake, you can have separate rooms!’ I exclaimed. ‘And what makes you think she wants one anyway?’

I received the full broadside of an outraged Fosworthy. My remark was an insult to her. She was the very flower of innocent purity. One had only to look at her. How dared I?

I apologised. I begged him to believe that my view of womanhood had been corrupted by mining camps. A preposterous statement! Mining camps in fact are suspended in an unsophisticated void
between cheerful obscenity and an idealism as hopeful as Fosworthy’s own. But he accepted my excuse as plausible, and calmed down.

So I was able to persist with tactful questioning and obtained some account of his doings. He assured me that he had been very cautious, avoiding Undine’s home and friends and waiting for
a chance to waylay her in the street. As soon as he succeeded, it was no longer necessary to visit Bath, for she was willing to meet him in Bristol or half-way. Twice she had tea with him. Once he
took her to a theatre. Once they had a morning together in the river meadows of the Avon.

‘And did you come directly back by train to London?’

‘Yes, from Bristol, where I said farewell to her. And then very carefully I called on you last night. But you weren’t in.’

It sounded like a child’s reproach.

‘And how did you spend today?’

‘Quietly in my room. I telephoned to her by previous arrangement to tell her that I had arrived and to express my devotion. She replied shortly that she herself was coming to London and
that I should book a room for her at my hotel. I blame myself for not reminding her at once that she would be compromised, but I was so overjoyed and she sounded so agitated that I did not. After
her arrival this afternoon I wished to see you and confide in you instantly. I was very conscious, however, that I owed it to you to wait until dark.’

Dark! He was hypnotised by words and conventions. As if he could not be followed in the excellent street lighting of London! He probably turned up his coat collar and pulled his hat over his
eyes, making himself more conspicuous still.

It was now certain that there really had been an attempt to remove me. The coat alone did not prove beyond doubt that I had received and helped Barnabas Fosworthy; he might have chucked it into
the boot of the car himself, rather than into a ditch. Similarly, my indiscretion to the Bank Manager could have an innocent explanation—that I had guessed, by putting two and two together,
the name of the man whom Aviston-Tresco had chased through the haunted darkness of the Mendips. But when, on the previous night, Fosworthy had been followed to my address, there was no longer any
reason to hesitate.

‘Is Miss Carlis connected with all these former associates of yours?’I asked.

‘No! No!’ he exclaimed. ‘If she were, I could never have risked all this. As it was, I had to be especially careful, since she has a female friend who heard, I fear, my
original rejection of our beliefs and was most displeased by it, but she had no reason to guess the identity of the cause of my emotion.’

‘Why shouldn’t your Cynthia have told her?’

‘Because I asked her not to, and she willingly gave me her word.’

Well, I couldn’t complain. He had warned me when he was at Hammersmith that his whole object in life was to be with his enchantress. My only hope was that she felt the affinity nonsense as
strongly as he did. But it seemed most unlikely.

‘So this friend of hers is in touch with Aviston-Tresco?’

‘You know his name?’

‘Of course I do,’ I answered impatiently. ‘What I don’t know is why he has it in for you. Didn’t you tell me that when you were struggling through that hedge he got
hold of your foot?’

‘For a moment. But I was kicking.’

‘Did he apologise?’

‘No. I am sure he only meant to put me back in con­finement until he got what he wanted from me. How do you know about the Apology?’

‘Poor little pussy-cat, for one thing,’ I replied obscurely.

‘You should show respect for earnestly held beliefs until you know enough to confute them, Yarrow. That is your only fault,’ he said, getting up. ‘But I see you are
tired.’

‘What hotel are you staying at?’

‘The Pavilion in Bayswater. But propriety demands that I should spend the night elsewhere. I shall return to Petunia Avenue and make it, in military parlance, my headquarters. Love
unconquerable in battle! Doubtless you remember your Sophocles?’

I replied rather sourly—for I felt extremely sore—that I doubted if Roman generals would approve of his tac­tics. He found it necessary to inform me that Sophocles was Greek, and
mercifully let it go at that.

Perhaps I should have accompanied him, but by this time I felt unable to move anywhere but bed. I warned him that he really ought to assume that he might be followed, and recommended a few quick
changes of the Underground, entering or leaving trains just as the doors were closing. That should do the trick. If he was being tailed, it was, after all, by one or two complete amateurs, not by
experienced detectives.

Next morning I felt much better and was able to hobble about more easily. At breakfast I was called up by a woman. She had a pleasant but rather too decided voice.

‘My name is Filk,’ she said. ‘Miss Filk. Dr Dunton advised me to call on you to discuss a very personal matter.’

I replied that I was unfortunately laid up with a touch of sciatica which prevented me from inviting her to lunch, and that I should be delighted if she would come round and have a drink about
midday.

There was nothing else I could do—short of saying that I refused to be interviewed except in the presence of police. It was just possible that she did come from Dun­ton, though I
doubted it. She might be the patient he had mentioned who had given him half her confidence and was inclined to see little foxes in blots.

Whoever she was, I suspected that she was coming to negotiate on behalf of Aviston-Tresco, with a foot somehow in both camps. In that case I had a chance to convince her that I did not know and
was not particu­larly anxious to know why my pub-keeping or supposed prospecting or any other activity was alarming them, and that the Quantocks would suit me just as well as the Mendips for my
future hotel.

I then telephoned 34 Petunia Avenue and asked for Mr Smith—partly to satisfy myself that he was all right, partly to see what he knew of Miss Filk. The landlady told me that he had gone
away over a week ago, leaving no address. But hadn’t he, I asked, returned last night? No, he hadn’t.