The Documents in the Case (16 page)

‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes — I suppose — I suppose — they’d better break it to her.’

‘Somebody’s got to. It’s a beastly business, but you don’t know any relations you could get hold of, do you?’

‘No. Very well. I’ll see to it. Sure you won’t come with me? You don’t mind staying?’

‘The sooner you go, the shorter time I’ll have to stay,’ I reminded him.

‘Right-ho!’ He paused, appeared about to say something, then repeated ‘right-oh!’ and went out, shutting the door behind him.

Three miles uphill in the dark — it would take him close on the hour, certainly. Then he had to knock somebody up, find a telephone, if there was one, get on to the police — say half an hour for that. Then, it all depended whether there was an available car in the village — whether he came straight back, or waited for the officials, who would come, presumably from Bovey Tracey. I need not, I thought, expect anything to happen under an hour and three-quarters or so. I suddenly remembered that I was cold, and started to hunt for kindling. I found some, after a little search, in an outhouse. The fire consented to light without much persuasion, and after that, and when I had found and lighted two extra candles, I began to feel in better condition to take stock of things.

A bottle of Bovril on the mantelpiece presented itself to me with helpful suggestiveness. I took up the kettle to fill it at the tap. A glance at the sink nearly turned me from my intention, but I conquered the sudden nausea and drew my water with care. Impulse would have flooded the repulsive evidences of sickness away, but as the phrase flashed through my mind the word ‘evidence’ asserted itself. ‘I must preserve the evidence,’ I said to myself, and found myself subconsciously taking note that this trifling episode went to prove — as I had always believed — that Anatole France was right in supposing that we always, or at any rate usually, think in actual words.

The Bovril and the psychology together restored my self-confidence. I began to reconstruct Harrison’s manner of death in my mind. He was quite stiff. I tried to remember what I had read about rigor mortis. One thinks one knows these things till it comes to the point. My impression was that rigidity usually set in about six or seven hours after death, and that it began in the neck and jaw and extended to the limbs and trunk, going away in the same order, after an interval which I could not remember. I braced myself up to go back to Harrison and feel him again. The jaw was rigid, the limbs still fairly flexible. It seemed to me, then, that he must have died some time that morning. I could not quite recollect by what train Lathom had said he had come to town, but, presumably, whenever it was, he had left Harrison fit and well. It was now getting on for midnight on Saturday. Say Harrison had been dead six hours — what then? I had no idea how long fungus-poisoning — if it was fungus-poisoning — took to act. Presumably, it would depend on the amount taken and the state of the victim’s heart.

What meal was it whose remains lay on the table? I looked into the cupboard. In it there was a large cottage-loaf, uncut. On the table was another from which a couple of slices or so seemed to have been taken. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If two loaves represented four days’ allowance before the carrier called again, the suggestion was that the last meal had been taken some time on the Thursday. Say Harrison had finished up the old loaf on Thursday morning, the remains probably represented Thursday’s midday or evening meal. The cupboard also contained about a pound of shin of beef, still in the paper in which the butcher had wrapped it, and smelling and looking rather on the stale side, a dried haddock, and a large quantity of tinned food. The meat was not ‘off’, but the blood had dried and darkened. It looked as though the carrier had left it on his Thursday’s visit. Evidently, therefore, Harrison had been alive then to take it in. But since he had not cooked it, I concluded that he must have been taken ill some time on the Thursday night or Friday morning.

Pleased with these deductions, I reasoned a little further. How soon after the meal had the trouble started? He had not cleared the table. Was he the kind of tidy man who clears as he goes? Yes, I thought he was. Then the illness had come on fairly soon after the meal. The chair which had stood before the used plate was now lying on its side, as though he had sprung up in a hurry and knocked it over. Searching about on the floor, I came upon a pipe, filled, and scarcely smoked. There was a cup, half-filled with coffee. I began to see Harrison, his supper finished, his chair pushed back against the edge of the rug, his pipe lit up, lingering over his after-dinner coffee. Suddenly he is gripped with a spasm of pain or nausea. He jumps up, dropping his pipe. The chair catches the edge of the carpet and falls over as he makes a dash for the sink. He clings to the edge of it and is horribly sick. What next?

I took up the candle and went out into the little yard at the back of the house, where there was the usual primitive country convenience. It occurred to me, as I pursued my sordid investigations, that the lot of coroners’ officers, policemen, doctors and detectives was much more disagreeable than sensational fiction would lead one to suppose. I soon had enough of the yard and came in again.

After that — the bedroom, I supposed. And whisky, of course. Pain and exhaustion would call for spirits. Well, I knew where I had found the whisky and the tumbler. Then more sickness — by that time he had been too bad to move. Then — I did not like the look of the broken bedstead. How did one die of fungus-poisoning? Not peacefully, I supposed. There was no peace in that twisted body and face. How long had the agony of delirium and convulsion lasted. It must be a damnable thing to die in so much pain, absolutely alone.

I did not like these ideas. I took a sheet from the other bed, and laid it gently over Harrison’s body, being careful to disturb nothing. Then I went back and sat by the fire.

At about half-past two, I heard voices outside, and opened the door to Lathom, a police-sergeant, and a man who was introduced as Dr Hughes of Bovey Tracey. He was a brisk and confident middle-aged man, and brought an atmosphere of reassurance along with him.

‘Oh dear, yes,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid he’s quite dead. Been dead for seven or eight hours, if not more. How very unfortunate!’ He drew a pair of forceps from his pocket and rolled up the dead eyelids delicately. ‘Mmm! The pupils are slightly contracted — looks as if your diagnosis might be correct, Mr Lathom. Poisoning of some kind seems indicated. No tablets? Glasses? Anything of that sort?’

I produced the tumbler from under the bedclothes, and explained about the whisky-bottle.

‘Oh, yes. Here, Sergeant — you’d better take charge of these.’

‘The whisky is all right,’ I volunteered. ‘At least, we both had some about three or four hours ago, without any ill effects.’

‘That was rash of you,’ said Dr Hughes, with a sort of grim smile. ‘We’ll have to impound it, all the same.’

‘The mushrooms are in here, doctor,’ said Lathom, anxiously.

‘Just a moment. I’ll finish here first.’ He felt and flexed the body, and looked it over carefully. ‘Was this bed like this when you left him? No. Broken in a convulsion, probably. Yes. All right, Sergeant, you can carry on here. I shall want the body and these bedclothes taken down to the mortuary, just as they are. And any other utensils—’

Lathom pulled my arm. ‘Let’s clear out of this,’ he urged. I stood my ground. Something — either inquisitiveness or the novelist’s greed for copy — impelled me to hang about and get in the way.

The doctor finished his investigations and covered the body up again.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘that’s about all I can do for the moment. Where’s this saucepan you were telling me about? Oh, yes. Fungus of some sort, obviously, but I can’t say what by looking at it. That will all have to go to London, Sergeant. When the Superintendent comes he’ll see the things packed up. I’ll give you the address they’re to go to. Sir James Lubbock, the Home Office Analyst — here you are, and you’ll see they telephone him to expect them, won’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What will you do, Sergeant? Hold the fort here till they send down to relieve you?’

‘Yes, sir. The Superintendent will be here very soon, sir, I expect. They’ve called him up.’

‘Very well. Now I’d better be off. I’m wanted for a baby case. You’ll find me at Forbes’s place if you want me. Lucky I hadn’t started. I don’t for a moment suppose anything will happen for hours, but it’s her first, and they’re naturally fidgety. If I don’t get there pronto, it’ll be B.B.A., out of pure cussedness, and I shall never hear the last of it. Well, good-night. Sorry I can’t give anybody a lift, but I’m going out in the opposite direction.’

He hastened out, and we heard his car chug away down the lane. The sergeant observed that it was a bad business all round, and suggested that he should take down notes of what Lathom and I could tell him. I found some logs in an outhouse and piled them on the fire till it roared up the chimney. More and more I began to feel this was a scene from a book; it was like nothing in life at all. It was — hang it — it was almost cosy. I should have ended, I think, by almost enjoying it — the policeman’s voice cooing like the note of a fat wood-pigeon, the ruddy blaze on his round face, the thick thumb that turned the pages of his notebook, the pink tongue licking the stubby pencil, and Lathom, talking, answering, explaining so lucidly (he had got over his nervousness and was childishly eager to tell his story) — I could have enjoyed it, if it had not been for a fear in the back of my mind.

The sun . .

You do not want a description of that stiff, cold sunrise. I was facing the window, and saw it — first a whiteness, then a hardening of the skyline — then a bluish reflection on the ceiling — then an uncertain gleam under the blanket of cloud. The weather was going to change.

I got up and wandered out across the fields. The stream, far off, was the only voice in the silence, and that was impersonal. It had no blood nor life behind its chatter.

I wandered to the edge of the slope, where the valley plunged down, gorse and heath and bracken all jumbled among the grey boulders, and looked across to where the huge tors humped their granite shoulders over the heights of Lustleigh Cleave. They looked grim enough.

What I was wondering was just this: Had Harrison ever guessed about his wife and Lathom? What had Lathom said to him in those long, solitary days? Had Harrison decided that his best way out was to clear out from the place where he was not wanted? I knew that, for all his irritating mannerisms, the man had a sterling unselfishness in him — and it would have been so easy for him — with his knowledge — to make a mistake on purpose when he was gathering fungi.

Would anyone choose a death so painful? Well — a man only the other day had committed suicide by pouring petrol over his clothes and setting himself on fire. And nothing could be made to appear more natural than this poison-death of Harrison’s. Why had Lathom been so anxious for me to come down with him? Had he had doubts about his reception? Had he expected something? Had Harrison — possibly — agreed, promised, even hinted that Lathom might return to find the way clear? Or had Lathom spoken some shattering word — shown irrefutable evidence — and left the facts to do their bitter work?

A cock crew in the valley. A sheep said ‘Baa!’ just behind me, so that I started and laughed. This kind of thing was morbid, and Harrison was the very last man to lay violent hands on himself. He clear meekly out to make way for a rival? Not likely!

I hurried back to the shack. The sergeant was dozing, his belt off and his tunic unbuttoned. Lathom was staring into the fire with his chin on his hands.

‘Hullo, you two!’ I said with unnecessary heartiness. The policeman jerked awake. ‘Lor’ bless me,’ he muttered apologetically. ‘I must ’a’ dropped off.’

‘Why not?’ said I. ‘Best way to pass the time. Look here, there’s a pound of sausages in our kit that we brought down last night. How about a bit of grub?’

We did not care about using any of the pots and pans in that place, so whittled a stick to a point, and toasted the sausages on that. They tasted none the worse.

2

Analysis

1. Margaret Harrison to Harwood Lathom
   

15, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 20.10.29

Oh, Petra, my dear, my own dear at last!

When I heard your voice on the phone this morning, telling me what had happened, I didn’t know how to believe it. It all seemed so strange. And when I hung the receiver up, I had to pinch myself to be sure it wasn’t a dream. I went upstairs, and there was the girl in her dressing-gown on the landing. She must have been hanging over the stairs, for she said, ‘Oh, ma’am. Whatever’s happened? I heard the telephone a-ringing and looked out and heard you talking. Has there been an accident ma’am?’ I said, ‘Yes; a dreadful accident. Mr Harrison’s dead.’ She stared at me, and I said, ‘He’s poisoned himself with eating some of those nasty toadstools.’ She began to cry. ‘I knew he would! Oh, ma’am, what an awful thing. Such a nice gentleman as he was.’ That seemed to make it real, somehow. ‘A nice gentleman’ — well, she wasn’t married to him. She couldn’t know how I was feeling. That was just as well, wasn’t it, Petra? She hung about and brought me some tea, sniffing and sobbing over it. I couldn’t say anything, but that was all right. She thought I was stunned with grief, I suppose. I did feel stunned. I can’t realise, even now — though I’ve just seen it in the paper. Fancy that! People keep on calling, but I’ve said I can’t see them. I want to be alone with my freedom.

17

Oh, Petra — didn’t I tell you that God was on our side? Our love is so beautiful, so right — He had to make a miracle happen to save it. Isn’t it wonderful — without our doing anything at all! That shows how right it was. I am so glad, now, that we didn’t do anything of the terrible things we thought about. It would have been so dangerous — and we might — I don’t know — we might have wondered afterwards. It would have been like living over a volcano. And now, Heaven has stepped in and made everything all right for ever and ever.

How glad I am you weren’t there when it happened. That seems like a special providence, too, doesn’t it? Because you would have had to go for a doctor, and then he might have recovered. And besides, people might have thought you had something to do with it — if they ever found out about you and me, I mean. Doesn’t it seem like a judgement on him, Petra? And I used to be so angry about his cooking and his toadstool book and everything — and all the while he was digging a pit for himself to fall into, like the wicked man in the Bible! It was all planned out from the beginning, to set us free for our beautiful life together. What was that thing people used to say — something in Latin about when God wishes to destroy anybody He first makes him mad. He was mad about the toadstools and things, you know. Sometimes, when he had those dreadful fits of temper, I used to think he was really and truly mad. I was afraid of him then, but I see now there was nothing to be afraid of. It was all meant to help us in the end.