The Black House

17

Then the dagger was found. It was the day of a hunt. Munday had seen some huntsmen from the window of his study in the morning, on their way to assemble at The Yew Tree. But not in red—they were dressed in black jackets and black bowler hats and sat very straight in the saddle. They came up from the back pasture, three of them, at a walk, the dark horses snorting, the riders rocking towards him, like outriders at a stately execution. It was an eerie procession, the black-suited figures in that morning mist, but when they came closer Munday saw they were very young girls with tight thighs and small pale faces, black ribbons on their bowlers and their hair tied behind. They held whips lightly across their laps. Then he had gone outside and seen the others, the red coats and top hats, and the floats and trucks drawn up along the road near the pub. There were cars, too, tilted on the grassy verge, the little Austins and Singers of people who had driven up from Bridport and beyond, the retired people and farm laborers for whom the hunt was an event to follow.

At eleven sharp he heard the commotion, the horns,

the hoof-thumps, the yapping hounds, and all day the hunt went back and forth behind the Black House. For periods there was no sound, and Munday waited; then a horn brayed and brought the hunt back, the muffled gallop of the horses and the shouts of the people chasing after. They were circling the house, the pack of hounds driving the fox across Munday’s fields. It raised his old fear of being hunted; but recognizing it he saw his distance from it. The sound of the hunt kept him from working. He examined his fear. It was like the memory of a breakdown, which, even after it ceases to disable, can still cause pain in the recollection; not erased but made small, the vision of a frightened man at the periphery of his mind, distress into humiliation, fear into lumpish frailty. Now the horns blared again and the hounds responded with maddened barks. He had been tricked about his heart, but he remembered the fingers of fire in his chest: he had believed himself to be ill as he had believed the shadows in the Black House to be fatal for him. The remembrance of the illness only brought him to selfcontempt, and he raged at the disruption of the hunt Mrs. Branch watched from the kitchen, Emma from an upper window; Munday bore it in his study, pretending to work. In the early evening the noise lessened, but just as Munday returned to his book he heard a car door slam and the bangs of the brass knocker. Then Mrs. Branch at the study door: “There’s a man outside says he wants to see you.” He went out and saw the dagger. But he didn’t touch it, for it was jammed to the metal of its hilt into the throat of a blood-spattered foxhound.

“Is this yours?” the huntsman had asked, opening the lid of the car’s trunk. He pointed with a short whip, slapping the thong against the corpse.

“The knife yes,” said Munday. “The dog no.”

“We want an explanation,” said the man.

“So do I,” said Munday, bristling at the man’s accusation.

“That dog was valuable.”

“The dagger’s worth something as well,” said Munday. “It was stolen from me several months ago.”

“Stolen you say?” The man flexed his whip.

“Yes, but how did you know it was mine?”

“I didn’t. This happened on your land—in the back. One of our whippers-in found him.”

“Bad luck,” said Munday. He reached for the dagger, but the man laid his whip on Munday’s arm. Munday glared at him.

“Not until we find out who did it,” the man said. “Quite obviously, one of your own people.”

“There’ll be fingerprints on it.”

“Of course. Fingerprints,” said Munday with as much sarcasm as he could manage. “I’d forgotten about those.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“I hope you do. Mind you, I want that dagger back.”

“What a vicious thing.”

“Purely ceremonial,” said Munday, who saw that the man meant his comment to reflect on him. “It wasn’t designed for killing. Africans don’t kill animals with knives. They can’t get close enough for that.” Emma came out of the house with a sweater over her shoulders. She shivered and tugged the sweater when she saw the dead dog; she said, “Oh, God, the poor thing.”

“My best hound,” said the man, and he gave it an affectionate pat on its bloody belly. “The rest of the hunt know about it—we’re all livid. It’s the first time anything like this has happened.”

“It’s terrible,” said Emma.

Munday said, “I agree, but I want you to understand that dagger is extremely important to my research.” My dog, my dagger: the two men bargained, as if haggling over treasures, pricing them with phrases of sentiment, insisting on their value, the dead dog, simple knife.

“Your knife, on your property.”

“You don't think Alfred had anything to do with it, do you?”

“I don’t know, madam. I’m reporting it to the police, though.”

“You do that,” said Munday.

“I’m not treating it as an ordinary case of vandalism.”

“I shouldn’t if I were you,” said Munday. “And I suggest you catch the culprit. It’s clear he had a grudge against me.”

“Really?” The man slapped his whip against his palm.

“One of these rustic psychopaths, trying to discredit me in some fumbling way. It's possible.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” asked the man.

‘Thaven’t the slightest idea.”

“There must be a reason.”

“Don’t look for a reason, look for a man. Munday’s law. Now if you’re quite through—”

“I was simply asking,” said the man. “If there’s a reason the police will know what it is before long.” He banged the trunk shut, said goodnight to Emma, and drove off.

Emma said, “Why were you so short with him?”

“I didn’t like his insinuations,” said Munday. ^tcl won’t be spoken to like that. Insolence is the one thing I will not stand for. I didn’t come here to be treated like a poaching outsider, and if that person comes back I shall refuse to see him. Do you find this amusing?”

“I’ve heard you say that before.”

“Not here.”

“No,” said Emma. “Not here."

In the house Munday told Mrs. Branch what had happened, and he deputized her: “Keep your eyes skinned and your ear to the ground, and if you hear a word about this you tell me.” The following day at breakfast he looked over his Times and said, “Well, what’s the news?”

And Mrs. Branch, who in the past had always responded to such a question with gossip, said, “Nothing.”

“No one mentioned it?”

“No sir,” she said. “Not that I heard.”

“I find that very hard to believe, said Munday. “You didn’t hear anything about the hunt?”

“Only that they caught a fox out back and blooded one of the girls from Filford way.”

Later in the morning there was a phone call from the vicar. He said, “I just rang to find out how you’re getting on. We haven’t seen much of you. I trust all is well.” Munday said, “I suppose you’ve heard about the dog that had his throat cut?”

There was a pause. Then the vicar said, “Yes, something of the sort.”

“That dagger was stolen in your church hall by one of your Christians,” said Munday. “If the police come to me with questions I shall send them along to you. You can confirm my story.”

“I didn’t realize it was a knife that had been stolen.”

“A dagger,” said Munday. “Purely ceremonial.”

“It’s very unfortunate that this happened so close to your house.”

“I don’t find it unfortunate in the least,” said Munday.“It has nothing whatever to do with me. Was there anything else you wanted?” That was a Friday. No policeman came to investigate, though Mrs. Branch said she saw one on a bicycle pedaling past the house. Munday was being kept in suspense, not only about the dog—which worried him more than he admitted: he didn’t like being singled out as a stranger—but also there was Caroline. He had not heard from her for weeks, and he missed her, he required her to console him. Emma tried, but her consolation didn’t help, and with the admission of her illness, her bad heart, she had stopped making any show of bravery and she had begun to refuse Munday’s suggestions of walks, saying, “No—my heart.” He believed her, and yet her words were an accurate parody of his own older expressions of weakness.

But he took his walks still, and walking alone he often had the feeling he was being followed—not at a distance, but someone very close, hovering and breathing at his back. The suspicion that he was being followed was made all the stronger by his inability to see the hoverer; it was like the absence of talk about the dead dog, the silence in which he imagined conspiring whispering villagers. The walks did little to refresh him: he was annoyed, and it continued to anger him that he was annoyed, so there was no relief in thinking about it—it only isolated his anger and made it grow. And he could be alarmed by the sudden flushing of a grouse, or the church clock striking the hour, or the anguish he saw in a muddied pinafore flapping on a low gorse bush.

He had avoided The Yew Tree since the billiard game and that wounding “nigger-boy,” but one Sunday several weeks after the discovery of the dagger he stopped in to cash a check. He entered the bar and precipitated a silence so sustained and deliberate among the old men, who sat like jurors, that his voice rattled in the room. And his check was refused.

“I never take checks,” said Flack.

“We’re a bit short,” said Munday. Then he was sorry he had said it: Flack obviously enjoyed refusing his request.

“Try Mr. Awdry,” said Flack. ‘Tve been stung too many times by the summer people. Paper-hangers, I call them. I can’t help you.” Munday folded the check and put it in his pocket. He was grim, his mouth shut like a savings box, but he smiled as he turned to face the silent, watching men. He said, “Earth-stoppers. What a perfect name.” He left, shutting the door with a force that made the bell jangle in its bracket, and striding quickly away for what he knew would be the last time.

Finally, two days later, he was summoned: that was the word he used when he described it to Emma. He had given up expecting to be contacted, so the phone call at first surprised him, and discovering it was not the police or even the vicar, he was confused. Then he heard and saw. The logic of the man addressing him in a friendly way, using his own and Munday’s first name—it was part of the pattern, one of those moments when the English village and its people had an African cast, Munday a stranger in the thick of it, considering his moves, a white man again. The phone call that had seemed so unexpected was inevitable. It fitted. It was from Awdry.

Munday said, “What’s on your mind?”

“I wondered if we might get together some time.”

“Perhaps later on.”

“Thursday’s a good day for me.”

“I was thinking of April,” said Munday. “After Easter.”

“Can’t I tempt you up here before that?”

“I’m rather busy.”

“I understand.”

“You should,” said Munday. “After all, it was you who told Flack I’m writing a book.”

“Mentioned it, did he?”

“Yes, but I set him straight. You see, Tm not writing a book.” It was partly true: he hadn’t touched the book for days. He thought it might have had something to do with the discovery of the dagger—it was an African occurrence, and when the village most resembled an African one he became incapable of describing his people. It seemed to make what he had already written dull, unoriginal, not news at all.

Awdry said, “I’m afraid I must see you this week. Friday’s the only day I have something on.”

“What a pity,” said Munday. “That’s the only day I’m free.”

“Then I shall cancel my engagement,” said Awdry, swiftly. “Come for a drink—shall we say six-thirty?” He had no choice. He hung up and said to Emma, ‘That was Awdry. Seems I’m wanted at the Boma.” He drove to the manor with a repeating memory. Once, years before, in Uganda, he had received a note from the District Commissioner, Mudford by name, saying that when he was next in Fort Portal he should look in. Munday did so, more out of curiosity than politeness, and was irritated by an African servant in a red fez and sash and khaki uniform who asked him to wait. The D.C. arrived and gave him sherry, and after some pleasantries took him to the window and warned him that his presence in the village might be interpreted as British cooperation in the Bwamba’s piecemeal hostilities against their Hamitic neighbors, the Batoro. He suggested Munday do his research elsewhere. Munday said he would do nothing of the kind.

"The least you can do is put Her Majesty’s Government in the picture,” Mudford said.

“Her Majesty’s Government will have to come and find out for itself,” said Munday. “I can’t offer you a bed at the Yellow Fever Camp, but I might be able to use my influence with the Bwamba and get you space in a hut.”

“I was told you might be difficult,” said Mudford.

“If you’re foolish enough to come to Bwamba, I’d advise you to take care,” said Munday. “My people don’t like to be trifled with.” Then he had felt very dose to the Bwamba. He was identified with them: Doctor Munday’s people— he had liked that. It had always been his ambition for his name to be linked with a people who were thought to be savage as if in describing their lives, giving new definition to their culture, promoting their uniqueness, he was inventing them.

Awdry met Munday at the door, greeted him, and said, “Whisky’s your drink, if I remember rightly.” He made Munday a drink and when they yvere seated in the library, amid all those artifacts and mounted heads, he said, “I’ll come straight to the point As you know, one of our foxhounds was brutally attacked near your house.”

“I daresay the hound was doing some brutal attacking of its own.”

“That’s open to dispute,” said Awdry. “I didn’t call you over to argue the merits of hunting—I already know your views on that subject, and I think any further discussion would be unprofitable.”

“Go on,” said Munday coldly.

“The dog was killed,” said Awdry. “We’re very concerned about it—why it happened in that calculated way, with your dagger, near your house.”

“You say ‘we’?”

“The village,” said Awdry.

“Ah, the village.”

“This has always been a peaceful village. People mind their own business and life goes on very much as it must have done for generations. The locals are proud, and they find the city ways of outsiders sometimes abrasive. But they’re very easy to live with once you get to know them. I count myself lucky to have been accepted by them—they respect me.”

“That’s another way of saying they keep their distance,” said Munday. “But I don’t blame you for wanting that.”

“I have many dear friends here.”

“Then you are lucky,” said Munday. ‘Tm still learning the language, as it were. To tell the truth, I’m not sure where I stand.”

“I can answer that,” said Awdry. “From the first, you were regarded with suspicion—a suspicion your lecture at the church hall did nothing to dispel. Every outsider is suspect here. But if I may say so, the outsider who antagonizes locals is a liability to the rest of us. One is expected to come to terms with the village. This hasn’t happened in your case.”

“You’re absolutely sure.”

“It is a fact.”

Munday said, “It is a bloody impertinence.”

Awdry took a sip of his drink, but his eyes stayed on Munday. He said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“Evidently, it’s of little account how I feel,” said Munday. “A dagger was stolen from me months ago. So one of your proud villagers is a thief. The dagger was not recovered until just the other day. So the police force is not up to scratch either. A dog was killed on my property—that’s vandalism as well as trespass. Facts!”

“Perhaps,” said Awdry. “But you might say they’re open to interpretation.”

“My foot,” said Munday, losing his temper. “Don’t play the D.C. with me. I don’t know who you’re trying to protect, but I can tell you that unless I get a satisfactory explanation I shall raise a stink.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“Go ahead!”

“Very well then, who are you trying to protect?”

“Not a soul,” said Munday. “Emma and I are too busy for intrigues.”

“You’re busy?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And yet you say you’re not writing a book?”

“That is no concern of yours.”

“This is a tightly-knit community. The people here are naturally interested in what goes on in the village. It’s not prying, though it may look that way to a complete stranger—”

“I have lived in villages before,” said Munday.

“If a person has a hobby or a sport, it’s usual for him to share it. If someone has visitors they’re frequently taken to the pub and introduced.”

“I have no hobbies,” said Munday.

“But you have visitors.”

“Visitors?” said Munday. “And how do you know that?”

“Shall I tell you something?” said Awdry. “There is very little about your life in Four Ashes that we don’t know.”

“That ‘we’ again.”

“Does it alarm you?”

“Not at all,” said Munday. “Should it?”

Awdry smiled. “That depends on whether you intend to stay down here for much longer. If you leave, of course it doesn’t matter—we’ll just write you off as another inexplicable foreigner.”

“What if I decide to stay?”

“You’ll be most welcome, though I can’t help feeling you’d be much happier elsewhere,” said Awdry. “If you stay you might have some explaining to do.”

“Explaining!” Munday laughed derisively.

“And if I were you I’d watch my step.”

Munday stood up and walked to the fireplace; he considered the fire for a moment, then spat into it. “I am here,” he said. “I pay my rent and go about my own business. I owe nothing to this village—least of all an explanation. The village owes me privacy. For all practical purposes this is my home, and whether I stay or go is no one’s concern but mine.”

“You say you’ve lived in villages before?” Awdry shook his head. “I’m surprised. Astonished. It’s not as simple as you say.”

“It is that simple,” Munday said.

“There are certain courtesies here, a certain standard of behavior—”

“Stop lecturing me.”

Awdry rose from his chair, but he didn’t follow Munday to the fireplace. He said, “I like your wife.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.”

Awdry caught Munday’s eye and addressed it: “I’m equally fond of Caroline.” Munday said nothing, and Awdry added, “We all are, no matter what people might say.”

“You’re not a very subtle man,” said Munday.

“I don’t want you to misunderstand me,” said Awdry, and his voice was somber with caution when he said, “Take care.”

“I thought we were discussing a dead dog.”

“Perhaps we are,” said Awdry. “That African— was he one of your students?”

“I have no students,” said Munday. He looked at his watch. “It’s time I left.”

“Don’t you see I’m trying to do you a favor?” Awdry spoke with a kind of bullying sincerity that was the nearest he had come to pleading with Munday.

“Do me another one,” said Munday. “Leave me in peace.”

“I shall be happy to. I only hope the others do the same.”

“What ‘others’?” said Munday, reacting as if the mere uttering of the word gave him an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

“I think you know better than I.”

“Thank you for the drink.” Munday started to go. “Wait.” Awdry went to a table. “Your dagger.” Munday took the dagger. “I thought they needed it for fingerprints.”

“There were no fingerprints,” said Awdry. “Open verdict.”

Munday said, “How very odd that in a village where everyone knows everyone else’s business they should not be able to get to the bottom of a simple thing like this. Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“Well, as you say, it’s an odd village,” said Awdry. He walked past Munday to the door and held it open.

“Then we must go,” said Emma.