Some Deaths Before Dying

JENNY

Mrs. Matson died in August. Flora Thomas telephoned next day with the news. Though she seemed to have elected Jenny as a kind of honorary chum during the process of arranging the trust for Uncle Albert, it still for a moment seemed surprising that she should have found the time to do so.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Jenny.

“Best thing that could have happened, really. She was absolutely longing to go.”

“That doesn’t stop it being hard on you.”

“No, it doesn’t. Still…I try not to think about it. Look, I was talking to Ma about the funeral—she couldn’t talk any more, poor thing, just blink her eyes for yes or no while you asked questions, like one of those nursery games—she actually managed to make it rather fun, dear old thing—she was a great tease…oh yes—Sergeant Fred. She wanted him to come to the funeral. Do you think that’s on? We could send a car this time—at least I hope we can. I think you know Eileen Cowan, don’t you? She’s a parson not far from you, and she’s the niece of an old friend of my father’s—Ma wanted her too, but she’s got a wedding—did I say it was Saturday week, the funeral?—but she’s going to see if she can get somebody else to take it—I must say I thought that was a bit much to ask—I mean she didn’t even know Ma but she said Ma was the only person who visited her uncle when he was in prison, except herself—so if she can come, Sergeant Fred knows her apparently so he’ll be all right if we send a car for the two of them, and you don’t have to worry about it.”

“No, I’ll bring him,” said Jenny. “Then it won’t matter whether Nell Cowan can come or not.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“I’d like to, if that’s all right. I won’t come to the service, if you don’t mind—I don’t suppose there’ll be much room, anyway.”

“Just as you like, but there won’t be a lot of us there, if you change your mind—just us family, and the servants, and a few locals. All Ma’s proper friends are dead—goodness I hope I don’t live that long—I can’t think of anything drearier—being the last leaf on the bough, you know…well, that’s splendid, if you really want to, but don’t forget, if Miss Cowan can come…Is that right? It doesn’t feel right—but Mrs. doesn’t feel right either—not that it matters with everyone using Christian names straight off—who was it tried to call me Flo the other day? Oh, yes, the Deputy Mayor, but you never know where you are with Liberal Democrats—they’re such a rag-bag, don’t you think?…And don’t forget, we could easily send a car, and if you want to come you could just hop in and save all that driving…”

“No, it’s quite all right, really. I’ll be glad to do it.”

This was the literal truth. It felt necessary that she should make the effort. It was as if her original visit to Forde Place had started vibrations which would whimper uncomfortably on, like the dwindling notes of a rapped wine glass, unless deliberately stilled. Repeating the journey would perhaps do that.

“Well, if you say so,” said Flora.

By now Billy Cochrane was merely an exorcised demon, gone with his golden handshake. Jeff, on a recommendation from Sir Vidal, was deep into his first heavy consultancy contract, but insisted on coming to the funeral. To share the driving, he said, but Jenny guessed that it was at least as much that he wanted to be with her, in case she found the event unsettling. He worked at his laptop whenever she was at the wheel. They dropped Nell Cowan and Uncle Albert at the church gate, drove the hundred yards back to Forde Place and parked with the other cars halfway down the drive.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said.

“Want me to come with you?”

“It’s up to you. But I’ll be all right. I’m fine, darling. Really. This is all—I don’t know—all the way it’s supposed to be. Sorting itself out. OK. You carry on with your stuff, and then you won’t be up half the night getting it finished.”

“Sure?”

“Yes. Funerals don’t last that long. I’ll be back in forty minutes and then we’ll go and find a pub while they’re all at the reception.”

She left him juggling equations and walked down the mown grass beside the drive. A caterer’s van was parked in front of the house, with last supplies being carried in. She followed a path round to the south side and on, still downwards, past a couple of terraced lawns, and then along the outside of a walled garden to a small meadow with a river beyond it. A mown grass path led to a footbridge.

Still without any particular purpose, beyond a sense of peace and well-being and vague, unformulated expectation, Jenny climbed the four steps and onto the worn grey timbers of the bridge. It turned out to span only an arm of the river, which at this point ran in two channels separated by a narrow island. Trees partly obscured the further channel, but Jenny could see no sign of a second bridge by which to reach the far bank.

She stopped halfway across and looked around. Upstream the river, shallow at this time of year but still fast-flowing over a rocky bed, was visible for two or three hundred yards. Several more gardens, some with boat houses, lined its bank. But downstream the view was blocked only thirty yards away by a curious industrial structure, with small buildings both on the island and the shore, and between them a sort of dam, brick, pierced with two low arches to let the water through. It looked Victorian, but not contemporary with the main house—some kind of primitive hydroelectric device, perhaps.

Jenny stared at it, puzzled. Though she had never before stood on this bridge, there was a resonance, an echo in her mind of something else she’d seen, something that had spoken strongly to her…In a dream, perhaps…No…The sunlit brickwork, the impenetrable shadows beneath the arches, the water steadily flowing out of light into darkness…a photograph, on the wall of Mrs. Matson’s sickroom…She had turned away from the bed, engulfed in her own private horrors, and been rescued first by the photograph of the monster fungus, and then by other images of life and death, including this view, cropped down to include nothing but the dam and the river.

She stood for several minutes, simply gazing at the moving water, then turned and walked back to the meadow. A clump of wild ox-eye daisies was growing close to the path. Using thumbnail and fingernail she nipped off two of the flower heads, carried them up onto the bridge, leaned on the rail and held them out over the water, side by side. She waited a ritual moment, then whispered their names.

“Norma. Sister Jenny. Thanks.”

She dropped them, saw them settle onto the current and race off towards the dam. They vanished in ripple-glitter before they reached the darkness.

“It isn’t over,” she told Jeff later. “I don’t think it ever will be. But from now on I’ll manage on my own. Just me.”

Jeff took the first stint of the journey home. He regarded ninetyfive as a sensible cruising speed on the motorway, so they were booming south through the shimmery, fumy harvest sunlight when Uncle Albert spoke suddenly from the back seat.

“Had to do it, didn’t I?”

“Do what, Bert?” said Nell, sitting beside him.

“None of your business, miss.”

“Are you sure? It sounds a bit like something you’d like to get off your chest—that’s part of my job, you know. Think about it, Bert.”

He was silent for several minutes. Jenny had the sun visor down to mitigate the glare and could see him in the vanity mirror. His eyes were open but he was nodding drowsily, as if he was about to drop off any moment.

“You’re wrong about that,” he said suddenly. “It’s never bothered me that much. Something’s got to be done, then it’s got to be done, that’s all. Terry didn’t like it, mind you—not from the first. Kept trying to talk us out of it…All right, I suppose I might as well tell you, now I’ve started…”

“One moment,” said Nell. “Do you mind turning the radio on, Jenny? I’m sure you’ll understand. Music, if you can find it.”

Dutifully Jenny tuned to Radio Three and adjusted the volume to give them the privacy of the confessional.

“Can’t have that,” said Uncle Albert. “Let me hear myself think, will you, miss.”

“You don’t mind them hearing too?” said Nell.

“What’s the odds any longer? They’re all dead and done with. Dead and done with. That’s how it goes.”

He fell silent again and settled back into the corner. His eyes closed but his lips moved from time to time, and when he spoke it was in a matter-of-fact tone, quiet but confident, suggesting that he had now ordered his thoughts. Jenny strained to hear, but could catch only snatches through the noises from the motorway.

“…didn’t like I was saying. ‘Suppose the bugger gets you, stead of you getting him.’…got it all worked out…boat business at Brightlingsea, and Ben kept a couple of yachts…lost overboard…note to give to Mrs. Matson…not like it was with crooks. Crooks don’t go running to the police soon as someone goes missing…got an answer for everything, so we talked Terry round in the end. It wasn’t only that, of course, it was knowing we couldn’t’ve done it without him. He’s got the contacts. There was this big fellow—forgotten his name—began with a B, didn’t it?…he’d pay whatever it took, but the B fellow…take the rap for the fellow’s brother as long as he could hang on to the money…”

The road surface changed to corrugated concrete, setting up a resonant drumming that vibrated through the bodywork of the car, drowning speech. In the mirror Jenny could see Nell leaning right across to catch Uncle Albert’s words. There was a brief switch to tarmac as they crossed an interchange, and a few more words came through.

“…drove his own cab—he’d been on the Road too, of course— so I told him time and place he was wanted…”

Then they were on the concrete again. Jenny saw Nell put her mouth to Uncle Albert’s ear. He nodded understanding and stopped speaking. Nell settled back in her place, out of Jenny’s line of sight. Uncle Albert closed his eyes and slept until they stopped at a service station for Jenny to take over the wheel.

At first as they drove on he seemed to have forgotten what he’d been doing. Jenny could glimpse him now in the driving mirror, and thought he’d fallen asleep again, but then he began to speak, picking up the story almost where he’d left off, but in a very different voice, a kind of dreamy monotone, like that of a subject under hypnosis, not addressed to Nell or to anyone in particular, but slow and clear enough for Jenny to catch almost every word at her quieter pace of driving.

“…Must’ve been about one in the morning before we got there. Sort of a farm place, by the smell of it, right out at the end of nowhere. No one around, which there wasn’t supposed to be, of course. There was a big shed we could drive the car right in, and we tied Stadding up and let him lay on a pile of straw and we each took a go of watching him while the other two kipped in the car. He never said a word all night and slept better than any of us, far as I could make out. Then soon as it was getting light I did a recce and found a place and we marched him out along the track. Like the end of the world, it was…”

He paused. Glancing in the mirror Jenny saw that he was leaning back into his corner with his eyes closed, a look of contentment, like an old man basking in a deck chair. The story, Jenny was sure, was coming to no good end, but he seemed to have removed himself from it completely. Nell didn’t prompt him, but after a while he did that himself.

“Yes, like the end of the world,” he said. “Dead flat, but for these dikes, and reeking of dried-out mud, and salt in the wind, and gulls, though you couldn’t see the sea, but you could tell it was there all right. I’d picked a flat bit of field in a corner between a couple of dikes so we were well down out of sight. We’d no reason to hang around, so I paced out the distance and we stood Stadding at one end and untied him and gave him a couple of minutes to move around a bit and rub himself where the cords had bit. I’d got the revolver on him, of course, in case he tried anything, but he didn’t act that interested, more like we were setting up to play a game or something and he thought it was a waste of time but he was going along with it to keep us happy.”

He paused again, but went on almost at once, still in the same sleep-walking tone, but more firmly, as if his memory were shedding the last vaguenesses of dream and coming into instant-by-instant focus.

“The Colonel was loading up the pistols and checking them over and when he’d done Terry brought them and showed them to Stadding and he took one, not thinking about it or anything, and Terry took the other one back to the Colonel. I told them the regulations and the signal I’d give, dropping my arm for them to fire, and then I said to raise their weapons, only Stadding didn’t do it right, taking aim like he was supposed to. Stead of that he put his pistol right up against his head, like he was making to blow his brains out, and his lips were moving like he was praying and I thought bugger me—he’s going to get it right in the end.

“Like you’d expect I took a look at the Colonel to see what he wanted, and he’d lowered his weapon and was just watching like I’d been, when I saw from his face something was up and before I’d time to look Stadding had fired, and the Colonel jerks his head aside—I’ve seen men do that as the bullet took them, and I thought he’d got him, but he yells, ‘Stop him,’ and Terry’s yelling, and Stadding’s running for the dike, only he catches his foot in a tussock and down he goes, and Terry’s on him before he’s up, and then I’m there with the revolver, close enough he can see I won’t miss, and he just nods and lets me march him back to where he’d been.

“I stand him up so the Colonel can take his shot at him, and then I move back not to get in the line of fire. The Colonel raises his weapon. There’s blood running down his face but he’s not noticing.

“ ‘So you’re going to shoot an unarmed man, are you, Jocelyn?’ says Stadding, teasing, and the Colonel lowers his weapon.

“ ‘We’ll start again,’ he says. ‘Bring me that pistol, Voss, and I’ll reload it for him.’

“Terry picks up the pistol and takes it over and I move in round behind Stadding and I let him hear me cock the revolver so he knows not to try anything, but that’s not what I’m at, not really. He’s had his chance, and it isn’t right him having another one, not after all he’s done. Soon as I’m near enough I let him have it in the back of the head, and that’s that.

“I look and see the Colonel’s just standing where he was, staring, like he doesn’t know what’s up.

“ ‘All over, sir,’ I tell him.

“It’s like he hasn’t heard me, so I tell him again.

“‘Right,’ he says. ‘Thanks, Fredricks,’ and he goes off and sits down at the bottom of the dike.

“I leave Terry to keep an eye on him and go back to the farm. There’s a sort of a handcart in the shed, and I load it up with the weights we’ve brought, and the young fellow’s body out of the boot of the car, and shove it back out to them. Terry and me, we pile Stadding’s body on top—the Colonel’s still sitting where he was, so we let him be. We shove the cart along to this bit of bog, which is why Terry’s brought us there in the first place. There’s wire round it, and signs saying it’s a quicksand only it’s black as tar and stinking. High tides the sea comes in, Terry says.

“Terry doesn’t like what we’re doing, mind you, not at all. It’s not exactly that he’s scared, but there’s too many of them in there already, he says. But he knows the drill, so we lash the bodies together and tie the weights on, and we put a rope with a slip knot round their ankles—that’s the kind of stuff you’re taught on exercises—and we haul them out across the bog and I pull the other end of the rope to loose the knot, and in a couple of minutes you wouldn’t know they’d been there, ever. Wiped out. Gone.”

A long pause, as if the subterranean memories had exhausted their flow. But no. He began to speak again, now in a mutter so low that Jenny caught only the odd word. It was about the drive back to London, with Colonel Matson still apparently in shock. “…like getting a drunk back into barracks past the guard…” she heard. Another, briefer silence, and a snorting laugh, and then, louder…

“We could do with a drink, Terry and me, after all that, so we took the first pub we came to. Fellow jostled Terry in the doorway, shoved him up against me, so I felt this great hard lump in his jacket pocket.

“Soon as we were settled I gave it a poke.

“‘What’ve you got in there, lad?’ I asked him. ‘Let’s have a look.

“Tell you the truth I thought he’d latched on to the Colonel’s revolver—there’d be a price for a gun like that among some of Terry’s plas—but when I reached in and pulled it out far enough to see without showing it around, I saw it was one of the old pistols. Terry’d been taking it over to the Colonel, remember, when I shot Stadding, so he just dropped it in his pocket and didn’t let on and I hadn’t thought to ask him.

“‘Shame on you, Terry,’ I told him.

“‘Just a bit of a souvenir,’ he says. ‘He’s not going to want to see it again.’

“‘No harm in asking,’ I told him. ‘I’ll take charge of it now.’

“I was meaning to take it up to Forde Place on my next forty-eight, but when I called about that Mrs. Matson said how the Colonel had had this stroke and wouldn’t be seeing anybody for a bit. I went up a couple of times before he died, but he wasn’t in a state to be bothered, so I let it be.”

Jenny glanced and saw him shaking his head gently, like any old man thinking about times long past and things long done with, but the movement must have startled him. When she next looked he’d pulled his shoulders back and was frowning and looking around, as if he had no idea why he should be in a car humming along the M25.

“Thank you for telling me that,” said Nell. “It’s a terrible story, but I’m glad to know about it.”

“You think I did wrong, then?”

“It’s a long time ago, Bert, a very long time.”

“Well, you’re right there,” he said. “Water under the bridge. Best place for it.”