The Ka of Gifford Hillary (17 page)

The tide was ebbing when Evans and Ankaret threw my corpse from the pier-head; so it had drifted only a few hundred yards, then caught on the spit of sand and been left just awash in the shallows. It was lying face upwards and while I cannot say I found its appearance pleasing, it was by no means as ugly a sight as I had expected. The eyes were wide and staring, the teeth clenched and the cheeks ruddy from congestion, but so far there were no signs of decomposition having set in.

Some minutes later Johnny reappeared with old Silvers and they came hurrying down to the place where the body lay. I could see that both of them were badly shaken and they exchanged only a few gruff sentences, mainly expressing their distress and complete puzzlement about how I could have met my death and been washed up on the beach in this way. Johnny then tried artificial respiration, but on realising the futility of his attempt gave it up.

It was he who suggested that my body should be put in the beach house—anyhow for the time being—as there would be less likelihood of Ankaret seeing them while they carried it there, should she be up and chance to look out of her bedroom window, than if they carried it all the way to the house.

The water-sodden clothes made it even heavier than it had been the previous night; so after staggering about fifty yards with it they had to put it down. But Silvers produced the bright idea that if they used a lounge chair as a stretcher that would make the job much easier, and after he had fetched one from the beach house they managed the remaining distance without having to take a rest. When they had laid the body on a sofa in the main room of the little pavilion they covered it with the table-cloth, then went up to the house. I accompanied them, now once more entirely absorbed in the drama of which my body was the focal point.

Silvers gave Johnny the number of Dr. Culver, our local G.P., and he telephoned to him to come at once; then, wisely circumventing the village constable, he reported the tragedy to police headquarters at Southampton. Meanwhile Silvers had collected the morning’s post from the box and having looked through it said:

‘There is a letter here, Sir, in the master’s writing for Her Ladyship. It isn’t stamped; so he must have put it in the box himself.’

Johnny took it with a frown. ‘That’s very queer. Surely his death can’t have been anything but an accident. Yet he would hardly have left a letter for her like this unless he was going out for some special purpose and feared he might not come back. All right, Silvers, I’ll take it up with me when I break the news to her. Do you know if she is awake?’

‘I expect so, Sir.’ Silvers glanced at the grandfather clock, which showed it to be just after half-past eight. ‘Mrs. Silvers will be getting Her Ladyship’s breakfast ready now. She has it in bed at a quarter to nine, and she is usually awake when Mildred takes in her tray.’

‘You had better tell Mildred to stay put for a bit, then. I must get some clothes on, and I don’t want her to butt in with breakfast just as I am breaking the news to her Ladyship.’

‘Very good, Sir. And I’ll tell Mrs. Silvers what has happened. We were both very attached to the master and I’m sure she will be terribly upset.’

As Silvers turned away Johnny walked through to the room that he always occupied when staying with us. It was one of those on the ground floor of the old bachelors’ wing, the upper floor of which I had converted into a laboratory, for Evans. As quickly as he could he shaved and dressed, then, his face showing his reluctance to tackle the distasteful task before him, he went upstairs to Ankaret’s room. In response to his knock, she called: ‘Come in.’

She had, as usual by that hour, brushed her teeth and tidied her hair, and she was sitting up in bed with an open book on her lap. There were dark shadows under her grey eyes but otherwise she looked quite normal, and although she must have guessed that only the discovery of my death, or that of Evans’s, could have brought Johnny up there, her voice was quite steady as she greeted him.

‘Why, hello Johnny. I thought it was Mildred with my breakfast. You must be terribly steamed up about your row with Sue, if you couldn’t wait till Giff gets downstairs to ask him to try to straighten things out for you with the Admiral. But the Prof must have kept Giff up so late that to avoid waking me he slept in his dressing-room. Go in and rouse him out.’

Ignoring her gesture towards the door leading to my dressing-room Johnny replied: ‘I wish I could; but he’s not there.’

‘Not there!’ she echoed. ‘But he must be. He hasn’t come through to have his bath yet. Unless—yes—he may have gone down for an early swim.’

‘I’m afraid that’s what he has done. At least …’ Johnny hesitated, baulking unhappily at having to tell her the worst But, seeing his evident emotion, she quickly took him up:

‘Afraid! Why are you afraid?’

Johnny held out the letter to her. ‘Giff went out during the night, fully dressed except for his smoking jacket. But he left this letter for you. Perhaps it may explain things.’

Taking the letter she ripped it open and appeared to run her eye swiftly over its contents. Then she dropped it, gave a
low cry and throwing herself sideways buried her face in the pillows.

Moving a step nearer to the bed, Johnny said softly: ‘My dear. It’s too frightful, I simply don’t know what to say. I shall miss him terribly too. He was much more to me than an Uncle.’

Raising herself on one elbow, but still keeping her face turned away from him, she cried: ‘It can’t be true! It can’t be true!’

‘I’m afraid it is. It was I who found him. I went down for a swim and I hadn’t been in the water more than a few minutes when I caught sight of his body. It had been washed up on that little point just below the place where the wood starts. I thought at first that he must have gone on to the landing-stage for something, then slipped and stunned himself as he fell in. But this letter …’ Johnny hesitated again. ‘His leaving it for you suggests that he knew he was going out to meet trouble. I didn’t think Giff had an enemy in the world. By God, though, if someone did him in I’ll see to it that they swing for it.’

‘No, it wasn’t that.’ Ankaret suddenly turned and faced him. ‘He took his own life. And it was my fault. I’ve been incredibly wicked and stupid. But I didn’t mean any harm. I swear I didn’t!’

While receiving the news she had put over a good act, and now she needed to act no longer. Her cry of self-accusation was genuine and it was perfectly natural that she should give free rein to her grief.

‘D’you mean he committed suicide!’ Johnny exclaimed. ‘I’d never have believed it. Giff wasn’t that sort of man.’

‘He did,’ she asserted, picking up the letter and offering it to him. ‘You had better read this. It’s all bound to come out sooner or later. Oh what can have possessed me to play the fool with Owen! Heaven knows, it was all innocent enough.’

Johnny began to read the letter but as he turned to the second page his eyes popped, and he exclaimed: ‘God alive! Then the Prof’s dead, too! Giff says here that he killed him. What a ghastly mess!’

Ankaret was now sitting up but her head was bowed and she had covered her face with her hands. ‘Serve him right,’
she muttered angrily through her fingers. ‘All this is as much his fault as it is mine; in fact more. Even if I did encourage him to flirt with me while I was bored with convalescing after my accident, I gave him no cause to boast about it. I don’t wonder Giff was furious. But he should have known me better than to believe that I’d ever fall for anyone like the Prof. Oh what am I to do?’

‘I’m afraid there is nothing you can do,’ replied Johnny a little shortly. ‘You had best stay here and let me take charge of everything.’ He had finished reading the letter, and added: ‘I think, too, that I’d better hang on to this. Showing it to the police right away may save a lot of trouble later. If we put all the cards on the table they’ll treat what we say as in confidence and be much more discreet.’

‘I won’t see the police! I couldn’t bear it,’ Ankaret declared, still speaking through her fingers. ‘I haven’t got to, have I? The thought of Giff being … being gone is enough to drive me crazy, without having to submit to an inquisition by a lot of ghoulish strangers.’

Johnny’s attitude had perceptibly hardened. As he put the letter in his pocket he said: ‘Now that murder comes into the affair as well as suicide, I think it’s pretty certain that the police will require a statement from you. But I’m sure they’ll give you a chance to recover from the shock, and not insist on seeing you today. Anyhow, I’ll do my best to head them off.’

She gave a great sigh, and murmured: ‘Thank you, Johnny. I can’t realise it yet. Please go now. I … I want to be left alone.’

Showing no reluctance, Johnny left the room, and hurried across the landing to the lab. As I entered it in his wake I saw at once that Evans had moved since I had last been there. He had managed to crawl a few feet towards the door; so he could not have been quite dead when Ankaret left him. But he was dead now. That was made clear by the way that Johnny, after kneeling for a moment to feel his heart, made an ugly grimace, stood up and walked out locking the door behind him.

As he went downstairs, Silvers was letting Dr. Culver in at the front door. Culver was a red-faced, middle-aged, rather untidy little man and far from being a shining light in his
profession. But he was quite sound about simple ills, he was our nearest G.P. and he and his father before him had looked after the family, so it had never even occurred to me to make a change.

Johnny introduced himself and in a few brief sentences gave the doctor a résumé of what had occurred. Culver blinked hard behind his pince-nez, muttered: ‘Terrible; terrible!’ several times, then accompanied Johnny up to the lab. After a cursory examination of Evans’s body the doctor declared:

‘Been dead several hours I should say. Judging by the degree of rigor mortis he probably died between three and five o’clock this morning. But one can’t be at all certain without a more thorough examination, and I don’t want to disturb the body any further before the police have seen it. Dear, dear! Poor fellow! He must have suffered a lot before he died. Please take me to Sir Gifford now.’

Down at the beach house he again made only a cursory examination. ‘Heart. Could have been shock, but I suppose those tablets you tell me he swallowed killed him. Pity you’ve no idea what they were. But that is really immaterial. They must have been pretty potent and given him a heart attack within a few minutes of diving into the water. I should have thought that in his case rigor mortis would have been more advanced; it is hardly perceptible as yet. That is probably explained by the water still having the warmth it acquired during the summer.

‘Well, there is no mystery for the police to solve here. That letter he left makes the whole affair only too distressingly transparent. I don’t think they will worry you unduly. Where there is no question of bringing a criminal to justice they are generally very good about keeping private tragedies as quiet as they can. And it is not for them or us to attempt to assess Lady Ankaret’s degree of responsibility. Women cannot be judged by the same standards as men. They are much more apt to become dominated by their emotions than is the case with our sex. I think I had better see her though, if only so that I can protect her from being badgered into making a statement before she has recovered from the shock. I expect, too, she will need a sedative, so I’ll leave her a few of the pills I carry in my bag, until she can get some more made up.’

As I listened, I blessed the little man for his unquestioning
acceptance of the situation at its face value, and his kindly consideration for Ankaret. Curiously enough it was not until he was walking back to the house with Johnny that I recalled once having helped him when in serious trouble.

His son, while a student at the London School of Medicine, had knocked down with his car, and killed, a child. In addition to the charge of manslaughter the police added one of dangerous driving, and as he had just left a cocktail party there was more than a suspicion that he had had one too many to drink.

For the defence it could be argued that it was twilight at the time, that the child had run out from behind a coffee stall, that the young man had a clean licence, and that he was habitually a sober type. But it was the sort of case in which if things went against the accused he was likely to get a really nasty sentence; so everything might hang on securing a tip-top barrister to defend him.

Culver’s father had left him nothing but his practice and the small family property; so he could not possibly lay his hands on the thousand pounds needed to brief a leading K.C. to fight his boy’s case. In his extremity he came to me. All he could offer as security for the loan was his practice and a promise to pay me back at the rate of two hundred a year; but knowing the modest circumstances in which he lived I felt that even that would prove a heavy burden on him. In consequence, I suggested that instead I should buy the field that adjoined his garden and a piece of woodland beyond it that he also owned. I didn’t really want them, and he had the honesty to point out that they weren’t worth the sum he needed. But his family had looked after mine for three generations, and the few hundreds capital I might drop meant no great sacrifice to me; so I eased his conscience by saying that when the Socialists were out the land might increase in value as a building site, and paid him the thousand for it.

In due course I had the satisfaction of learning that the money had not been wasted, as the boy escaped a prison sentence and later took his M.D. Having been occupied since with so many affairs the matter had slipped into the background of my mind; but now that it came back to me, I felt that if little Culver owed me anything he had, if unconsciously, now handsomely repaid it.

On reaching the house Culver went up to see Ankaret, while Johnny walked through the drawingroom to my library. Not wishing again to see Ankaret torn between the necessity to lie and her genuine grief, I followed the latter. Although it was only just half-past nine I assumed that, seeing what he had been through, he felt that he must get himself a drink; but I was wrong.