The Clock Strikes Twelve

Chapter 12

Half an hour later all the sounds in the house had ceased. The sound of footsteps going to and fro in the wing above the study, the noise of water running into the bath and out of it, the gurgling and murmuring in the pipes as the cistern filled again-all these were past. Refreshed by his bath, Elliot had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. The house lay in that profound silence which falls upon a place of human habitation when conscious thought and movement are withdrawn. There is a special quality about this silence of a sleeping house. It is a silence of life, as different from the empty stillness of a deserted dwelling as sleep is different from death.

Phyllida had dreamed that she was walking in a garden and it was dusk. The air was full of the scent of roses, and she knew that Elliot was there. She could feel his arm about her, but she couldn’t see his face. Then a woman in a long black veil came out of the dusk and took him away. Phyllida couldn’t see her face either because of the veil, but she thought it was Maisie Dale. In her dream all the pride was melted out of her. She ran after them, calling for Elliot, but he wasn’t there, and the woman in the veil turned round and threw it back. And she wasn’t Maisie Dale, but Grace Paradine. And she said, “I’ll never let you go.”

Phyllida woke up with a sound in her ears like the sound of a cry. She didn’t know whether it was really a cry or not. She woke up in the dark, and she was frightened. A breathless sense of danger just escaped had followed her out of the dream.

She reached out her hand and switched on the bedside light. At once the charm and security of the room closed her in. The dream was gone. She blinked at the light and saw that the hands of the little chromium clock stood at just past twelve. This horrible year was gone. She was glad that there had been no need to sit up and see it go. Let it slink away and be forgotten, like a guest who has stayed too long and whom nobody regrets.

She put out the light again and began to think about seeing Elliot in the morning. This time there must be no risk of someone else between them. She thought, “I’ll ask him to come up to my sitting-room.” Deep down under the thought a little laughter stirred. Funny to be planning an assignation with your husband-funny, and nice. The feeling of having left all the unhappy things behind was strong upon her. Presently she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

It was Lane’s custom to enter Mr. Paradine’s room at half past seven precisely. The procedure never varied. Advancing a dozen steps, he put down the tray which he carried, after which he closed the open window, drew the curtains across it, and switched on the light. On the first morning of 1943 he observed his usual routine, but as he turned towards the bed he was surprised to find it empty.

His first impression was just that and no more- the bed was empty. But hurrying upon this came perturbation and dismay, because the bed had not been slept in. There were the covers neatly folded back, there the undented pillows, and the red and white striped pyjamas laid ready but unworn. He was so much startled that he found it necessary to verify what he saw by coming close up to the bed and touching it, after which he hastened to the bathroom, his mind full of the idea that Mr. Paradine might have had some sudden seizure. But in the bathroom everything was in order-too much in order-the bath-mat unruffled, the bath showing no watermark, toothbrush and toothpaste shut away.

In a state of considerable distress he proceeded to the study and approached the windows, passing between the curtains to the long door in the centre, and at once he began to be very much afraid, because the door was unlatched and stood ajar with a cold wind blowing in. It blew right in his face, cold and a little wet. It must have rained in the night. The smell of rain came in with the wind. He pushed the door wide and stood there looking out.

It was very dark. There would be no daylight for another hour. He could see nothing. Even though he knew just how far the terrace ran out to the low parapet which guarded it, he could not discern the edge.

He passed back into the room, found a torch, and switching it on, came out upon the terrace. It must have rained hard in the night. Wherever the stone had worn away water stood in a pool. The beam of the torch dazzled on the wet flags, and dazzled the more because for all his trying Lane could not hold it steady.

He came to the parapet, no more than two foot high, and stood there with his lips moving and the torch hanging in his hand.

“I always said so. Lizzie will bear me out-I always said so. ’Tisn’t safe having a drop like this and no more than a two-foot wall-I always said so.”

The words made no sound. His lips moved on them but made no sound.

Presently he lifted the torch and sent the beam down over the wall-down the long drop to the path beside the river. There was something there-a huddle of darker clothes, the sprawled shape of a man as immovable in the fading beam as the path on which it lay or the rock beyond it.

Lane stopped shaking. A dreadful certainty steadied him. On the extreme right of the terrace, a flight of steps led down to a little lawn from whose farther side a rustic path wound to the river’s edge, sometimes running straight for a yard or two, sometimes breaking into wooden steps, slippery now with the wet. He came down it with accustomed feet. It was a path to tread in sunny weather, going down to the boat-house on a summer afternoon-not like this, not in the dark of a January morning. He remembered that it was New Year’s Day.

And then he came out on the river path and focussed the torch on that dark, sprawled shape. It was James Paradine, and he was dead.