Fallen Into the Pit

Four

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I never noticed before,” he said to Bunty, in the late evening, when Dominic was safely in bed and his ears no longer innocently stretched after a solution of problems which were his as surely as anyone’s, “I never realized how opaque people’s looks can be. We read meanings into them every day, but suddenly when it’s a matter of life and death it makes you look again, and start weighing possibilities and separating them from suppositions—and altogether in the end you’re terrified to think anything means anything. For a moment I could have sworn that each of those two was seriously afraid the other had done it. And then I couldn’t be sure if that was really the meaning of the looks they were giving each other, or if it was something shared, or what it was.”

Bunty looked at him with her practical partisan sympathy, and agreed: “That’s a pity. Because if each of them really believed the other had done it, that would mean neither of them had done it, and then at least somebody would be safely out of it.”

“Not quite, because an expression in the eyes isn’t evidence. But at least I could have felt sure of something in my own mind. Now I’m sure of nothing. It’s as open as ever it was— in their direction rather wider open. Because there was an intent to murder, I’m sure of that, and while it’s credible that it should evaporate as suddenly as that—because he’s a sane man with both feet on the ground, and only too deeply aware how much trouble his wife’s been dragged through already— still it’s also a strong possibility that it didn’t evaporate.”

Bunty, aware of his hand’s vague undirected searching for something in his pockets, got up and brought him the tired man’s solace, his tobacco pouch and pipe, and the necessary matches. She put them into his lap, and watched his fingers operate them mechanically. Even over the first deep draws he made a face of disappointment. It was his own growing, and he always forgot to be prepared for the shock; but he was too stubborn to admit that it was unsmokeable. Maybe he hadn’t got the knack of curing it properly; anyhow, it was pretty awful. Bunty had never before noticed his distaste quite so clearly, and she made a mental note to buy a tin of his old brand the very next morning, and leave it somewhere for him to find, quite by accident.

“And another eye-opener,” said George fretfully, “is the ease with which well-known citizens can walk about this darned place for hours at a time, and meet nobody. You wouldn’t think it possible.”

“In the dark, in a scattered country district where everybody drops off home by his own particular beeline across the mounts, well, it isn’t really so astonishing as it seems,” said Bunty reasonably.

“Not when you come to weigh up everything, perhaps. But it’s confoundedly inconvenient. Here we’ve got Wedderburn going off in the sulks to walk off a slight load before he goes home to his mother. And Jim Tugg wandering home by devious ways, alone but for his dog—but I grant you, there’s nothing new about that, Jim likes his dog’s company far better than most men’s. And Hollins stalking Helmut, by his own confession, with intent to knock hell out of him at the very least, and then taking his disordered fancy for a walk until the agitation set up by the thought of murder had passed—”

“And Mrs. Hollins,” said Bunty very soberly, “at home by herself all this time, shut up with the thought of Helmut. Nobody to take her mind off it, nobody to see what she did, nobody even to tell us whether she was really there or not.”

George looked through the detestable smoke of his unthrifty crop at her, and found her looking very solemn and rather pale under the ruffled red hair. Awfully like the shivering but acute waif, so pale, so important, so large and scared of eye, who had met him on the clay-flats by the shrunken brook, standing over the blond head of Helmut.

“You don’t really think, do you, that she might have done it?”

“I think I might,” said Bunty, “in her place. Especially if I had reason to think that you might be thinking of doing it for me. She had a background of desperation. I don’t mean it came naturally to her, but her scope had been rather forcibly widened, you see. And she had, if we come to it in earnest, the finest motive you could wish to see.”

“But the fact that her mind was used to dealing with these awful things would also mean that it was trained and equipped to resist them. I mean, she could not only seriously consider murder, after all she’d experienced—she could effectively reject it, too. I’m not satisfied that it’s the strongest motive we have to look for. People of insignificant balance kill for insignificant things—sometimes almost lightly. And we haven’t quoted the tenth part of Helmut’s enemies. There are dozens of them, more trivial ones but real ones, round this village unaccounted for. There’s at least one good union man who began the ideological feud with him long before young Fleetwood ever opened his mouth. And plenty of others, too. And there’s something about this whole affair that makes me feel it never was planned. It came out of nowhere, out of some man’s mind through his hands so fast he never had time to stop it or even see what it was, until it was done. That’s how it feels to me.”

“It could still have been a woman,” said Bunty, “even that way.”

“It could. Women have murderous impulses, too. But wouldn’t a woman have been—more disastrously subtle about it, afterwards? I don’t know. This was so short and simple. No messy attempts to cover up, but a clean walk-out.”

“And no weapon,” said Bunty, biting her underlip. “I suppose the revolver didn’t show any sign?”

“Not a mark. Nobody’s head was beaten in with the butt of that gun recently, that’s certain.”

“If only,” burst out Bunty, speaking for Comerford with authentic passion, “if only it weren’t for all the people whose lives are being bent out of shape now, I’d pray like anything that nobody’d ever solve it. But it’s the village that’s being murdered, not Helmut. Oh, George, isn’t there any way out of it?”

“Only one. Straight ahead and out the other side—one man short or one woman short,” said George, “whichever it turns out to be. And the sooner the better, for everybody concerned!”