Fallen Into the Pit

Four

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It was Constable Cooke who said it, after they had been over and round and through every fact and every supposition they possessed between them. They had it now in positive terms that not only had Helmut’s tunic-lining retained rubbings of down from the pheasants’ feathers, but the pheasants’ feathers had acquired and guarded, through their long repose in the clay of the pit, distinct traces of the fluff from Helmut’s tunic-lining. Leaving no doubt whatever that these were the very birds, and very little that they had been planted in precisely the same way, and probably for the same reasons, as their discoverer had supposed. That was something at any rate, though it led them no nearer to a solution. They were left counting over their possibilities again, reducing them to the probabilities, which seemed to be four, and weighing these one against another to find the pennyweight of difference in their motives and opportunities. And Constable Cooke, who was light of heart because he was less surely involved, said what George had refrained from saying.

“Among four who had equal reasons for wanting him dead, and equal opportunities for killing him,” he said brightly, “personally I’d plump for one of the two who’re known to have had enough experience to be good at it. A sweater, after all, is most likely to have been knitted by someone who can knit.”

George sat looking at him for a moment in heavy silence, jabbing holes in the blotting-pad of his desk with a poised and rapier-pointed pencil, until the over-perfected tip inevitably broke off short. He threw it down, and said glumly: “You may as well elaborate that, now you’ve said it.”

Cooke sat on the corner of the desk, swinging a plump leg, and looking at his sergeant with the bland, blond cheerfulness which filled George sometimes with a childish desire to shock him; like a particularly smug round vase which no right-minded infant could resist smashing. He would have been quite a nice lad, if only God had given him a little more imagination.

“Well, it’s obvious enough, isn’t it? There’s Mrs. Hollins, admittedly she was being pushed to extremes, and you can never be sure then what a person can and can’t do. But I’m not professing to be sure, I’m only talking about probabilities. There’s a woman who never hurt anybody or anything in her life, as far as we know, and never showed any desire to; and even if she got desperate enough to try, it would be a bit of a fluke if she made such a good job of it, the first time, wouldn’t it? And then old Chris, how much more likely is it with him? I bet he never killed anything bigger than a weasel or a rabbit in his life. A more peaceful chap never existed. Not to mention that he had less time for the job than some of the others. But when you come to the other two, my word, that’s a different tale!”

“The other two, however,” said George, “had much less solid motives for murder. I’m not saying they had none, but there wasn’t the urgency, or the personal need. And I’m inclined to think, with Wedderburn, that while people will certainly do desperate things for the sake of other people, when it comes to it they’ll do far more desperate ones for their own sakes.”

“Well, but according to that, even, they had as much motive as Hollins had. More, because they had more imagination to be aware of it. If Hollins might kill for his wife’s sake, so might Tugg, if you ask me, he thinks the world of her. And Wedderburn had a grudge on Jim Fleetwood’s account, as well as a general grudge that a German, and a near-Nazi at that, should be able to live here under protection while he stirred up trouble for everybody in the village.”

“Very natural,‘’ said George, ”and common to a great many other people who’d come into contact with Helmut round these parts. You could count me in on that grudge.”

“Well, yes, most of us, I suppose. But in different degrees. And still you’re left with this great difference, that Tugg and Wedderburn have both had, as you might say, wide experience in killing. They knew how to set about it, easy as knocking off a chicken. And even more, they’d got used to it. Most people, even if they could bring ’emselves to the actual act, would shrink from the idea. But those two lived with the idea so long that it wouldn’t bother them.”

George continued to stare at him glumly, and said nothing. The door of the office, ajar in the draught from the window, creaked a little, naggingly, like a not-quite-aching tooth. It was evening, just after tea, and faintly from the scullery came the chink of crockery, and the vague, soft sounds of Bunty singing to herself.

“Well, it’s reasonable, isn’t it?” said Cooke.

“Reasonable, but not, therefore, necessarily true. You could argue on the same lines that people in London got used to the blitz, and so they did, but the reaction against it was cumulative, all the same. It was in the later stages they suffered most, not from the first few raids. Long acquaintance can sicken you, as well as getting you accustomed to a thing.”

“Yes, but in a way this death was like a hangover from the war, almost a part of it. You can easily imagine a soldier feeling no more qualms about rubbing out Helmut than about firing a machine gun on a battlefield. For years it had been their job, a virtue, if you come to think of it, to kill people like Helmut. And it was a job they were both pretty good at, you know—especially Wedderburn, if all the tales are true.”

George thought what he had been trying not to think for some time, that there was something in it. Not as much as Cooke thought, perhaps, but certainly something. In time of war countries fall over themselves to make commandos and guerrillas of their young men, self-reliant killers who can slit a throat and live off a hostile countryside as simply as they once caught the morning bus to their various blameless jobs. But to reconvert these formidable creations afterwards is quite another matter. Nobody ever gave much thought to that, nobody ever does until their recoil hits the very system which made and made use of them. Men who have learned to kill as a solution for otherwise insoluble problems in wartime may the more readily revert to it as a solution for other problems as desperate in other conditions. And logically, thought George, who has the least right of any man living to judge them for it? Surely the system which taught them the art and ethics of murder to save itself has no right at all. The obvious answer would be: “Come on in the dock with us!”

And yet he was there to do his best for a community, as well as a system, a community as surely victims as were the unlucky young men. And the best might have to be the destruction of one victim for the sake of the others. But he knew, he was beginning to feel very clearly, where the really guilty men were to be found, if Jim Tugg or Chad Wedderburn had committed murder.

“So your vote goes to the schoolmaster, does it?” he asked, stabbing the broken point of the pencil into the wood until powdered graphite flaked from its sides. The door went on creaking, more protestingly because the outer door had just opened, but he was too engrossed to remark it.

“Well, look at his record! It’s about as wild a war story as you could find anywhere, littered with killings.” Cooke, who had not suffered the reality, saw words rather than actualities, and threw the resultant phrases airily, like carnival balloons which could not be expected to do any harm. “He must be inured to it by now, however much he was forced into it by circumstances to begin with. After all, to a fellow like Wedderburn, who’s seen half the continent torn into bloody pieces, what’s one murder more or less to make a fuss about?”

Dominic’s entering footsteps, brisk in the corridor outside the open door, had crashed into the latter part of this pronouncement too late to interrupt it short of its full meaning. Too late Cooke muttered: “Look out! The ghost walks!” There he was in the doorway, staring at them with his eyes big and his mouth open, first a little pale, and then deeply flushed. George, heaving himself round in his chair, said resignedly but testily: “Get out, Dom!” but it was an automatic reaction, not too firmly meant, and Dom did not get out. He came in, indeed, and pushed, the door to behind him with a slam, and burst out:

“Don’t listen to him, he’s crazy, he’s got it all wrong! Chad Wedderburn isn’t like that!”

“Now, nobody’s jumping to any conclusions,” said George gently, aware of a vehemence which was not to be dismissed. “Don’t panic because you hear a view you don’t like, it’s about the five hundredth we’ve discussed, and we’re not guaranteeing any of ’em!”

“Well, but you were listening to him! And it’s such a lot of damned rubbish—” he said furiously. His hazel eyes were light yellow with rage, and his tongue falling over the words in its fiery haste.

“Dominic!” said George warningly.

“Well, so it is damned rubbish! He knows nothing about old Wedderburn, why should he go around saying such idiotic things about him? If that’s how the police work, just saying a man was a soldier five years ago, so this year killing somebody comes easy to him—I think it’s awful! I bet you hang all the wrong people, if you’ve got many Cookes! I bet—”

“Dominic!” George took him by the shoulders and shook him sharply. “Now, let’s have no more of it!”

“You listened to him,” said Dominic fiercely, “you ought to listen to me. At least I do know Mr. Wedderburn, better than either of you do!”

“Calm down, then, and stop your cheek, and you’ll get a better hearing.” He gave him another small, admonishing shake, but his hands were very placid, and his face not deeply disapproving. “And just leave out the damns,” he said firmly, “they don’t make your arguments any more convincing.”

“Well, all right, but he made me mad.”

“So we gathered,” said Cooke, still complacently swinging his leg from the corner of the desk, and grinning at Dominic with impervious good humor. “I never knew you were so fond of your beaks, young Dom.”

“I’m not! He’s not bad! I don’t like him all that much, but he’s decent and fair, anyhow. But I don’t see why you should just draw farfetched conclusions about him when you don’t even know him beyond just enough to speak to in the street.”

“And you do? Fair enough! Go on, tell us what you think about him.”

“Well, he isn’t like what you said. It went just the opposite way with him. In the war he got pushed into the position where he had to learn to live like you said, because there wasn’t any other way. And he did jolly good at it, I know, but he hated it. All the time! He only got so good at it because he had to—to go right through with it to get out, if you know what I mean. But he just hated it! I don’t believe anything could make him do anything like that again. Not for any reason you could think of, not to save his life. It’s because he learned so much about it, because he knows it inside-out, that he wouldn’t ever bring himself to touch it, I’m absolutely sure.”

“He may talk that way,” said Cooke easily, “but that doesn’t necessarily prove anything.”

“He doesn’t talk that way. He acts that way. Well, look what happened when he came home! The British Legion wanted him to join, and he wouldn’t. He said he was only a soldier because he was conscripted, and it was time we forgot who’d been in uniform and who hadn’t, and stopped making differences between them, when they’d most of them had about as much choice as he had. And at school some of the fellows tried to get him to talk about all those things he’d done, and he wouldn’t, he only used to tell us there was nothing admirable in being more violent than the other fellow, and nothing grand about armies or uniforms, and the best occupation for anyone who’d had to fight a war was making sure nobody would ever have to fight another. He said fighting always represents a failure by both sides. He said that to me, the day I started a fight with Rabbit. He was always down on hero-worship, or military things—any fellows who tried to suck up to him because of his record, he was frightfully sarcastic with them at first, and then he got sort of grave and sad instead, because he isn’t usually sarky. But he always squashes those fellows if they try it on.”

“Some of those who value their own achievements most,” said George, with serious courtesy, and looking him steadily in the eye, “also resent being fawned upon publicly.”

“Yes, but I think not when it’s that kind of achievements, really, because the kind of man who loves being a hero, and getting decorated, and all that—well, don’t you think he has to be a bit stupid, too?—kind of blunt in the brain, so he doesn’t see through all the bunk? Mostly they love being fussed over, so they must be a bit thick. And old Wedderburn isn’t stupid, whatever he may be.”

George looked at his son, and felt his own heart enlarged and aching in him, because they grow up, because their intelligences begin to bud and branch, to be separate, to thrust up sturdily to the light on their own, away from the anxious hand that reaches out to prop them. Even before their voices break, the spiritual note has broken, odd little rumblings of maturity quake like thunder under the known and guarded treble. Little vibrations of pride and sadness answer somewhere in the paternal body, under the heart, in the seat of shocks and terrors and delights. My son is growing up! Bud and branch, he is forward, and resolute, and clear. It will be a splendid tree. This is the time for all good parents to try their mettle, because the most difficult thing in life to learn is that you can only retain people by letting them go. George looked at Dominic, and smiled a little, and elicited an anxious but confiding smile in return.

“That’s quite a point,” he said. “No, he isn’t stupid, and he doesn’t like adulation, I’m sure of that. D’you want to tell us about that row you had over the fight? It might explain more than a lot of argument.”

“I don’t mind. It was funny, really,” said Dominic with a sudden glimmering grin, “because it was about him, only he didn’t know it. He turned out such a mild sort of beak, you see, old Rabbit started throwing his weight about and saying he didn’t believe he’d done any of the things he was supposed to have done, and it was all a pack of lies about his adventures in the war, and all that. Well, I didn’t care whether old Wedderburn wanted to get any credit for all those things or not, but I didn’t see why Rabbit should be allowed to go about saying he was a liar. Because Wedderburn isn’t sham, anyhow, that’s the biggest thing about him. So we argued a bit about it, and then I hit Rabbit, and we didn’t have time to get any farther because old Wedderburn opened the window and called us in. He never jaws very much, just says what he means. He said what I told you, that fighting never settles anything, it’s only a way of admitting failure to cope with things, and the only thing it proves is who has the most brawn and the least brain. He said it was always wrong short of a life-and-death matter, and anyhow, he just wouldn’t stand for it. And then he said we’d say no more about it, if we’d both give him our word not to start the fight again.”

“And what did you say?” asked George, respectfully grave.

“Well, Rabbit said O.K. like a shot, of course he would! And I was a bit peeved, really, because you want time to think when you get something like that shot at you. So he sent Rabbit away; I thought that was a pretty good show. And I thought pretty hard, and I said I thought he was right, really, about fighting being a bad thing, but still he had fought. But he wasn’t mad, he just said yes, but not over nothing, like us. And he said I had to make up my mind, and promise not to start scrapping over it again, or else! He’d never licked anybody, not since he came, but he told me straight he would this time, so I had to think frightfully fast, and maybe it wasn’t such a bright effort. Only I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to judge what was nothing and what wasn’t, and I still couldn’t see why Rabbit should call him a liar and a cheat, and get away with it. At least,” he said honestly, “I could see that I couldn’t exactly be allowed to judge, but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t do it, all the same. So I explained to him that I’d rather not make any promises, because I thought that I ought to decide for myself what was worth righting for, and what wasn’t.”

“And what did he say to that? Was he angry?”

“No, he— You know,” said Dominic doubtfully, “I think he was pleased! It sounds awfully daft, but honestly, he looked at me as if he was. Only I can’t think why, I expected him to be mad as the dickens, because it sounded fearful cheek, only it really wasn’t meant to be. But I honestly didn’t see how it could be right just to let somebody else make the rules for you, without making up your own mind at all.”

“Did he agree with you?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly say. He just said that when you’ve got to that stage of maturity, you have to go the next bit, whether you want to or not, and realize that in any society you have to be prepared to pay for the privilege of making up your own mind. I can’t remember all the right words, but you get what he meant. He didn’t seem a bit angry, but I knew he wouldn’t let me off, and he was giving me a chance to back out. But I wasn’t going to. So I said yes, all right, I would pay.”

“And then he licked you,” said George.

“Well, he had to, really, didn’t he?” said Dominic reasonably.

“Wasn’t that a bit illogical,” suggested Cooke, with his hearty, good-natured, insensitive laugh, “for a bloke who’d just been preaching nonviolence?”

Dominic replied, but punctiliously to his father’s look, not to Cooke who was in his black books: “No, I don’t think so, really, because he had to make up his mind, too. If you see what I mean!”

“Yes,” said George, “I see what you mean.”

“So you see, don’t you, that what Cooke was saying about him is just bunk? He didn’t get used to it, it sickened him, only there just wasn’t anything else then for him to do. And honestly, he’s the last man in the place who could have done a murder—even that murder. Dad, don’t make an awful mistake like that, will you?”

“I’ll try not to,” said George, softened and gentle with astonishment at seeing his son’s face all earnest anxiety on his account. “Don’t worry, Dom, I’ll remember all you’ve told us. It’s perfectly good evidence, and I won’t lose sight of it. Satisfied?”

“Mmmm, I suppose so. You know, it’s so easy to say things like Cooke was saying, but it isn’t true. All kinds of fellows had to fight, thousands and thousands of them, but they were still just as much all kinds in the end, weren’t they? I think it may have got easier for some, and harder and harder for others. And anyhow, you can’t just lump people all together, like that.” He flushed a little, meeting George’s smile. “Sorry I swore! I was upset.”

“That’s all right. Going out again now?”

“Yes, I came to tell Mummy I might be a bit late, but I shall only be at the Harts’. Mr. Hart is picking the late apples, and they want to finish tonight, so a few extra hands—” For whom, thought George, there would be ample wages in kind at the end of the picking, even if they came only half an hour before the daylight began to fail.

“All right, I’ll tell her. You cut along.” And he watched him spring gaily through the door without a glance at Cooke, with whom he was still seriously annoyed.

An odd, loyal, disturbing, reassuring kid, sharp and sensitive to currents of thought and qualities of character. If he didn’t like Chad Wedderburn “all that much,” very decidedly he liked him in some degree, and that in itself was an argument. But the weakness of the evidence of a man’s own mouth is that it often has two edges. Fighting never settles anything, cannot be right short of a life-and-death matter. But a man must and should be his own judge of what is and what is not a matter of life and death, because that is ultimately an issue he cannot delegate to any other creature. And having reached that stage of maturity, he must realize that in any society—because societies, state or school or church, exist to curb all the nonconforming into conformity—he must pay for the privilege. So far, if he had perfectly understood him, Chad Wedderburn.

Even Cooke was thinking along the same lines. He looked after Dominic with an indulgent smile, and said appreciatively: “Well, I hope the folks who don’t like me all that much will stick up for me as nobly. Poor kid, he doesn’t know what it all adds up to. Call your own tune, pay your own piper! Well, and what if he did just that? He allowed Dom the right to, you can bet he’d insist on the same rights for himself. What did he decide about Helmut, do you suppose? That it would be worth it?”

George said nothing. It could follow, but it need not follow, that was the devil of it. Only something else echoed ominously in his mind, the hot, reiterated note of Chad’s revulsion from bloodshed, genuine, yes, too terribly genuine, but was it perhaps pitched in an unnatural key? Did it not sometimes sound like the prayers of a man’s mind for deliverance from his own body? Might not a man thus passionately denounce what he feared most of all in himself? A man who was wise enough and deep enough to dread his own facility in destruction, an adept whose skill terrified him. And then the last remote, unexpected case, argued over and over in the mind, where this dreaded efficiency in killing, held so fiercely in restraint, began to look once more legitimate, began to argue its right to a gesture almost of virtue.

“Call your own tune, pay your own piper!” said Constable Cooke, brightly. “Some merely get hammered, some get hanged. It’s a matter for the individual whether he finds it worthwhile!”