The rivals of Sherlock Holmes : early detective stories (23 page)

More than this (now they had left the churchyard and were driving down a country lane to Shave’s Cross), Munday had the separated lover’s regret, of spending time and effort with people who knew him as the figure he had been in the past, a personality he had outgrown, but one for which they retained a loyal respect: the regret that he was not with his lover, giving her the attention he felt he was wasting on his wife and that burdensome acquaintance. The duties of sentiment and friendship, accumulated obligations, intruded on this secret life. So he drove and he could smell Caroline on his hands and taste the crush of her mouth and breast on his tongue, as pungent as apples.

“Why don’t we give the tea a miss?” said Munday.

“I’d love a cup of tea,” said Emma. “I’m sure Silvano wants one, too. Don’t be a wet blanket, Alfred. You’re brooding so.”

Eager to get it over with, he stopped at the first signboard that said Teas. It was a small bungalow of cob and hatch, set back from the road on a stony drive. The cob had been whitewashed and showed large smooth patched places; its windows were set deep in the bulging walls, as if retreating into sockets. It had a satisfying shape, as natural as a ground-swell, and a well-tended look; but dense clouds now filled the late-aftemoon sky, and the gray light on the dark grass that surrounded the dwelling gave it a cheerless air. Smoke billowed from the end chimney, and Munday found it hard to see all that streaming smoke and not think that the bungalow was about to go into motion and chug out of the garden like a locomotive.

A middle-aged woman in a blue smock met them at the door and greeted them uncertainly, avoiding Silvano’s gaze. She showed them to a parlor jammed with small tables. There was a fire crackling in the grate, and two other customers, a man and woman, seated near it. Munday wanted to leave as soon as he saw them. But the proprietor was seating

Emma, and Silvano had already taken his place at the table—he was toying with a small oil-lamp which was the centerpiece. The couple at the other table did not look up. The man was wearing an overcoat, the woman a hat, and both were buttering toast with raised arms to keep their sleeves out of the tea.

“Not many customers,” said Silvano.

The woman in the blue smock frowned at her pad. She poised her pencil stub and said, “Will that be three teas?”

Munday said, “With clotted cream.”

“Thank you.” She scribbled on the pad, and with deft simultaneous movements of her hands dropped the pad into her apron pocket and pushed the pencil into her hair. She removed the fourth place mat. Emma slipped her coat off; she leaned forward, her arms behind her back, her breasts brushing the table, as she worked her arms out of the sleeves. Munday had always found this one of the most attractive things a woman could do. He saw Silvano staring.

“Believe it or not,” said Munday, “this cottage is made out of mud. The walls are about two feet thick, of course, but it’s mud sure enough—clay, actually—on a wooden frame. Could be a few hundred years old.”

“Mudded walls and grass roof,” said Silvano. “Just like Bundibugyo!”

“But not as civilized,” said Munday.

“Oh, I think so,” said Silvano, seriously.

“Down here for a holiday?” It was the man by the fire who had spoken, and it was some while before Munday realized the man was addressing their table from across the empty room. The man hadn’t looked up. His hands were still raised, stropping a sliver of toast with butter.

“You might say that.” Munday was gruff; he hated the man’s probing question.

“It’s not a bad place,” said the man. “For a holiday, that is.”

“The weather’s been splendid lately,” said Emma.

“It’s holding,” said the man. “It’s been a mild winter—that’s why everyone’s down with flu.” Now he crunched his toast, and his chewing was like muttering, as if he had more in his mouth that a bite of toast. “It’s going to be a terrible summer—it always is after a winter like this.” He took another bite of toast and sipped his tea.

His wife spoke up: “We’ll pay for these warm days!” She stared at Munday from under her crooked hat.

“Yes, it’s not a bad place for a holiday,” said the man. “But you don’t want to move down here. Take my advice—we’ve been down here for eighteen months.”

“It’s a glorious part of the world,” said Emma.

“Hear that?” said the man to his wife.

The wife leaned in the direction of the Mundays* table. She said, “The people are so unfriendly around here. We’ve had them around to tea, but they never invite you back.”

“Just go their own way,” said the man.

“How awful for you,” said Munday.

“I know it looks very pretty,” said the man. “But I can tell you it’s no bed of roses.”

“We’re from London,” said the woman. “Retired.”

“Silvano’s from London,” said Emma.

Silvano smiled and started lighting a cigarette.

“Not from overseas?” asked the man.

“From overseas,” said Silvano, puffing on the cigarette. “And also from London, as well.”

“I knew you were strangers,” said the man. “I can always tell. London?”

“It’s rather a long story,” said Munday.

The man started to speak, then he fell silent. The door had opened and the woman in the blue smock entered with the tea things. She arranged them on the table, cups, teapot, a china pitcher of hot water, a plate of scones and fruitcake, a dish of dark jam, and a large dish of cream.

“Will that be all?” asked the woman.

“Lovely,” said Emma.

The woman scribbled again on her pad, tore off the leaf, and slipped it beside Munday’s plate. She left the room. An inner door banged.

“She’s from London,” said the man at the far table. “Barnet. Lost her husband last year. Don’t get her started.” He was biting his toast between sentences. “Road accident. Ever see such driving? They ran this as a bed and breakfast. Now she can only manage teas. That’s why we come here. Give her the business.”

The man continued to chatter. Munday decided to ignore him. He split a scone, buttered it, spread it with jam, and topped it with a spoonful of clotted cream. Silvano watched him, following one step behind him in his preparations: Munday was eating his scone as Silvano was spreading the cream.

Emma said, “I’m sure you’ll be making new friends.”

“Not here,” said the man. “I don’t want them here, thank you very much.”

“It’s this retirement,” said the woman. “It’s all so new to us. We’re thinking of buying a spaniel.”

The man turned to Emma and said, “The way I see it, you’ve got to have a reason for getting up in the morning.”

Emma said to Silvano, “How do you like your tea?”

“Very good,” he said. His lips were flecked with cream.

“Look at him eat!” said the man, nodding at Silvano. “Chagoola mazooli?”

“Mzuri sana,” said Silvano.

“I was there during the war,” said the man.

“I’m about ready to push off,” said Munday.

“Wait, Alfred,” said Emma. She poured hot water into the teapot.

The man and wife were rising from the table, the man putting on his tweed cap, the woman her coat.

“You’ve got to have a reason for getting up in the morning,” said the man.

“Yes, dear,” said the woman.

They approached the Mundays’ table. “Nice talking to you,” said the man.

“Enjoy your holiday,” said the woman.

The man clapped a hand on Silvano’s shoulder and said, “Cold enough for you?” He left, snickering.

“Poor old soul,” said Emma.

Silvano said, “He seemed jolly friendly.”

“A sad case,” said Munday. “Now, if you’re about through, I think we’d better be going.”

“Do let him finish his cup,” said Emma.

“I’m finished,” said Silvano, and drained it.

“You’re the one who’s lagging,” said Munday to Emma.

It was dark by the time they arrived back at the Black House, and Silvano said, “It never gets this dark in London.” Munday went to his study, Emma stayed in the kitchen, and Silvano settled himself in the living room, hunched over and watching “Doctor Who.”

At seven o’clock Emma came into the study. She shut the door behind her and said, “Aren’t you going to take him out?”

“He’s perfectly happy,” said Munday. He was taking the measurements of a number of Bwamba axe-heads; they were spread before him on the desk, large and small. He picked up a sharp spiked one and struck the air with it. “I’ve got my axe-heads, he’s got his telly program.”

“You’re ignoring him.”

“You know how I loathe television,” said Munday. “Why don’t you sit with him?”

“I thought you might take him to the church.”

“The church?” Munday put the axe-head down. “Emma, there’s nothing on at the church.”

“There’s a service.”

“It’s Saturday night. It’ll be shut.”

“I think you should go down there.”

“We’ve seen one church today,” said Munday. “We can go tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” said Emma. “Tonight. It’s important that you go now.”

“Emma, that’s insane—”

“Oh, God, I have such a headache,” she said, and she groaned, “Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Alfred, I’m not well.”

“I’ll tell you what—I’ll go down to the church alone, and if there’s something going on I’ll come back for Silvano. In the meantime, he can watch television.” Emma said, “Hurry.”

Munday drove to the village and parked near The White Hart. The stained-glass windows of the church were lighted, and entering by the side door he could see baskets of flowers on the altar and all the lights burning, the flowers and the illumination giving the church interior the illusion of warmth and height. It was his first visit to the church, but there was nothing strange about it; no two African huts were the same to his eye, but all English churches seemed interchangeable, and this one, with its smell of wood and floorwax and brass polish, its sarcophagus with a recumbent marble knight and crouching hound, its dusty corners and wordy memorials—this one was no different from St. Candida’s, or the hilltop church in East Coker, St. Michael’s, which Emma had enthused over (and made an occasion for urging an Eliot play on Munday; “I can’t vouch for his poetry, but I can tell you he’s fairly ignorant about Africans,” said Munday when he had read it). He browsed among the leaflets in the wooden rack at the door, read one of the memorial stones, and then seated himself in the last pew. Above him the ribbed windows were gleaming black, gem-shaped segments of roughened glass fixed in lead.

A figure suddenly stood up in a front pew, and the pew itself growled. Shawled and seated when he had entered, she had blended with the jumble of still shapes near the carved pulpit—he hadn’t seen her. She clacked down the aisle, holding the shawl at her throat, her head down. But Munday recognized her before she had gone three steps, and he started to get up. She passed by him without lifting her eyes.

Munday followed her outside to the churchyard, the cemetery of old graves on the far side of the church. She walked along a gravel path, past illegible headstones—some leaning, some broken or tipped over—past a tall grave-marker with a burst plinth, and through the grass, where snowdrops had started, the tiny white blossoms growing in clusters close to the ground, as if they had been scattered there like handfuls of wool: they were lighted by the reflection of the church windows that fell across them. She sat on a stone bench under a large yew tree, out of the glare of the moon and nearly hidden in the shadows of the thick foliage. Munday sat next to her, and though he did not touch her, he could feel her breathing, that warm pulse in her throat, her skin warming his a foot away.

He kept apart and whispered, “What are you doing to Emma?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“No.” But she was—he could see her mouth.

“What are you telling her?”

“Only that I want you.” The purr in her voice gave the words an emphatic nakedness.

He said, “Caroline—”

“Hold my Jiand,” she said. She pulled off one glove and reached over and laid her white hand on his thigh.

He covered her hand with his own and said, “You’re a witch.”

“I’m not,” she said, with a pout of amusement on her mouth. “Anyway, what do you know about witches?”

“A great deal,” he said. “You’re using her.”

“I can only reach you through her.”

He mumbled something, not words, the syllables of a sigh.

“What did you say?”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” he said.

Caroline clutched his hand; Munday could feel her fingers, her nails pricking his palm. She said, “You want me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s fair.” She leaned over and kissed him lightly, but his cheek burned, as if she had scarred him where her lips had brushed his skin.

“I want to make love to you now.”

“We can’t,” she said.

“Please.”

“Here?” She laughed. “On this bench? In the church? Or there, behind that grave?”

“Anywhere,” he said, and looked hopelessly around the graveyard.

She took his chin and turned his face towards hers. She said, “I believe you would!”

“Hurry,” he said. He hugged her and tried to draw her up.

“No,” she said. “Never that. Don’t hurry me— don’t push me into the grass and hike my skirt up, then fumble with me and tell me you have to go when you finish.”

“I won’t.”

“But you will. You have to. It would ruin it.”

Munday said nothing; she was right—Emma was waiting.

“There’s time,” she said. “We’ll do it properly— not hurrying and half-naked and looking at your watch. I know you would if I let you, but I won’t let you cheat me that way. I want to be naked, on top of you, with a fire going like that first night. God, that was wonderful. You were babbling in some African language.”

“Was I? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought you knew,” she said. “I thought you were doing it deliberately.”

“Perhaps I was,” he said.

“Next time I want to make love to you. Take you in my mouth and swallow you.”

“When?” he whispered.

“Soon,” she said. “You’ll see.”

“I’ve never known anyone like you.”

“But then you’ve been away, haven’t you?”