A Judgement in Stone (21 page)

The music had stopped. Joan must have stopped it. The banging had stopped and the screaming. A silence more profound, more soothing to the mind and the savage breast, filled the drawing room like a thick tangible balm. It held Eunice suspended. It petrified this stone-age woman into stone. Her eyelids dropped and she breathed evenly and steadily so that, had she had an observer, he would have supposed her fallen asleep where she stood.

A stone that breathed was Eunice, as she had always been.

The exalted calm of one who has performed a holy mission descended upon Joan Smith. She surveyed what she had done and saw that it was good. She had scattered the enemies of God, and thus purified herself. If the McNaghton Rules had been applied to her she would have passed the test, for though she had known what she was doing she did not know it was wrong.

She was innocent in the true meaning of the word. And now she would drive down into Greeving and tell the village what she had done, proclaim it in the streets and shout it aloud in the Blue Boar. It was a pity she had cut the phone wire, for otherwise she could have lifted the phone and announced it to the operator. Calmly, majestically, she laid down the gun and picked up the tape recorder. It was still on. She pressed something and the little red light on it went out. Inside it was a record of her achievement, and it is a measure of Joan’s madness that at that moment she saw herself, at some future time, playing the tape for the edification of the Epiphany brethren.

Of Eunice she took very little notice. Eunice stood immobile, still holding her gun, staring implacably at the bodies of Giles and Melinda, who lay side by side in death, closer to an embrace than they had ever been in life. But Joan had forgotten who Eunice was. She had forgotten her own name, and the past, and Shepherds Bush and Norman. She was alone, a titaness, an angel, and she feared nothing but that some malignant spirit, allied to the Coverdale interest, might yet intervene to prevent her from proclaiming the good news.

George’s blood was on her jumper, on her hands and face. She let it dry there. Uncharacteristically, with a long slow stride, she walked towards the door and the hall, and Eunice was aroused from her contemplation.

“You’d better wash your face before you go,” she said.

Joan ignored her. She opened the front door and looked for demons in the darkness. The drive and the garden were empty, and to Joan they seemed friendly. She got into the van.

“Suit yourself,” said Eunice. “Have a good wash before you go to bed. And mind you don’t say a word. Just keep quiet.”

“I am the spear of the Lord of Hosts.”

Eunice shrugged. That sort of thing didn’t much matter, Joan always went on like that, and the village people would only think she was more crazy than ever. She went back into the house where she had things to see to.

With only side lights on, Joan drove the van euphorically out of the grounds of Lowfield Hall. She drove with her head held high, looking to the right and the left, anywhere but ahead of her, and she smiled graciously as if to an admiring throng. It was a miracle she even reached the gates. But she did reach them and got about a quarter of a mile along the lane. There, where the lane bent rather sharply to avoid a high brick wall that enclosed the front garden of Mr. Meadows’ farmhouse, she saw a white owl drop from one of the trees and flap heavily in front of her at windscreen level. Joan thought it was a demon sent by the Coverdales to get her. She stamped on the accelerator to smash through it and smashed instead into the wall. The front part of the van crumpled up like a concertina, and Joan’s head crashed through glass into a twelve-inch-thick bastion of concrete faced with brick.

It was half past nine. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were visiting their married daughter in Sudbury, and there was no one else in the house to hear the crash. Norman Smith was in the Blue Boar where they had had their own bit of excitement, although it wasn’t until the following day that they realised how exciting it had been. He went home at ten-fifteen. His van wasn’t parked between the village store and the triangle of grass, but he supposed
Joan was still off somewhere with Eunice, it being Eunice’s last night in Greeving, and a good thing too. No one down Greeving Lane (or, at least, no one reported the crash) until the Meadowses got home at twenty-five past ten. When they saw their ruined wall and the van with Joan lying unconscious half in and half out of it, they phoned first for an ambulance and then they phoned Norman Smith. Joan, who was alive though in a bad way, was taken to hospital where they weren’t going to worry about whether the blood on her was all hers or not, there was so much of it. So Joan Smith, who ought to have gone into a mental hospital months before, ended up in an intensive care ward for the physically injured.

This was the second time that evening Norman had been afforded the sight of blood. Very nearly three hours before he was fetched to the scene of his wife’s accident, two young men had walked into the saloon bar of the Blue Boar, and the smaller and younger of them had asked the licensee, Edwin Carter, where the men’s room was. He wanted to wash his hands, for the left one appeared injured in some way, and blood had seeped through the handkerchief that bandaged it.

Mr. Carter directed him to the lavatory, and his wife asked if there was anything she could do in the way of first aid. Her offer was refused, no explanation of the injury given, and when the young man came back he had rebandaged his hand with a cleaner handkerchief. Neither of the Carters nor any of the patrons of the bar recalled actually having seen his hand, but only that there had been blood on the original bandage. The other witnesses were Jim Meadows of the garage, Alan and Pat New-stead, Geoff and Barbara Baalham and Geoff’s brother Philip, and Norman Smith.

Mrs. Carter was to remember that the man with the injured hand drank a double brandy and his companion a half of bitter. They sat at a table, drank their drinks in less than five minutes, and left without speaking to anyone except to ask where they could get petrol at this hour, Meadows’ garage being closed. Geoff Baalham told them there was a self-service petrol station
on the main road past Gallows Corner and, describing how to find it, followed them out onto the Blue Boar’s forecourt. There he noticed their car, an old Morris Minor Traveller, maroon bodywork in a wooden shooting brake frame. He didn’t, however, notice the registration number.

They left the village by Greeving Lane, their route inevitably taking them past Lowfield Hall.

On the following day all those witnesses furnished the police with descriptions of these strangers. Jim Meadows said they both had long dark hair, were both dressed in blue denim, and the one whose hand was not injured was over six feet tall. The Carters agreed that the tall one had long dark hair, but their daughter, Barbara Baalham, said both had brown hair and brown eyes. According to Alan Newstead, the one with the injured hand had short fair hair and piercing blue eyes, but his wife said that, though piercing, the eyes were brown. Geoff Baalham said the short one had fair hair and grey corduroy jeans, while his brother insisted both wore denim jeans and the tall one had bitten nails. Norman Smith said the fair one had a scratch on his face and the dark one was no more than five feet nine.

All of them wished they had taken more notice at the time, but how were they to know they would need to?

Left alone, Eunice, who had wanted to “see to things,” at first saw to nothing at all. She sat on the stairs. She had a curious feeling that if she did nothing but just went off in the morning with her cases, to the bus stop she had long ago located, to the station, and got to London, it would all be all right. They might not find the Coverdales for weeks, and when they did they wouldn’t know where she was, would they?

A cup of tea would be nice, for she had never had that earlier one, Joan having poured the contents of the pot all over Jacqueline’s bed. She made the tea, walking back and forth past George’s body. The watch on his dead wrist told her it was twenty to ten. Now to pack. She had added very little to her personal property during those nine months apart from what were
truly consumer goods—sweets, chocolate, cake—and these she had consumed. Only a few hand-knitted garments swelled her stock of clothes. Everything was packed into Mrs. Samson’s cases in much the same order as it had originally gone in.

Up here, in her room, it felt as if nothing had happened. Pity she had to go tomorrow really, for now there was no one to make her go, and she liked it here, she had always liked it. And it would be even better now that there was no one to interfere with her life.

It was rather early to go to bed, and she didn’t think she would be able to sleep. This was exceptional for Eunice, who knew she could always sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. On the other hand, the circumstances were exceptional too, never had she done anything like this before, and she understood this. She understood that all the excitement was bound to keep her awake, so she sat looking round the room, looking at her cases, not feeling in the mood for television and rather wishing she hadn’t packed her knitting at the bottom of the big case.

She was still sitting there at a quarter to eleven, wondering what time the bus went in the morning and hoping it wouldn’t be raining, when she heard the wail of a siren in Greeving Lane. The siren was on the ambulance that had come to fetch Joan Smith, but Eunice didn’t know this. She thought it must be the police, and suddenly, for the first time, she was alarmed. Down to the first floor and Jacqueline’s bedroom to see what was going on. She looked out of the window, but she could see nothing, and the wailing had died away. As she dropped the curtain the siren started up again, and after a few moments some vehicle she couldn’t see but for its light howled up towards the Hall, passed the Hall, and charged off towards the main road.

Eunice didn’t like it. It was very unusual in Greeving. What were they doing? Why were they out there? Her television viewing had taught her a little about police procedure. She put a bed light on and walked about the room, absently wiping every solid article Joan had touched, the broken glass and the ornaments and the teapot. Steve, in her serial, when he wasn’t shooting people or chasing them in cars, was a great one for fingerprints. The
police would be here in a minute, though she could no longer hear their siren. She went downstairs. She went into the drawing room and again put a light on. Now she could see she had been silly, thinking the police wouldn’t find out. If they didn’t come now, they would come tomorrow, for Geoff Baalham would bring the eggs in the morning, and if he couldn’t get in he would look through the window and see George’s body. To stop them suspecting her, there were quite a lot of things she must do. Wipe Joan’s prints off the wire cutters, for one thing, wipe clean the guns.

She looked around the drawing room. On the sofa, splashed with blood, was an open copy of the
Radio Times
, and along with the bloodstains was some writing. Eunice hated that, far more than the stains. The first thing she should have done was destroy that copy of the
Radio Times
, have burnt it in the sink with matches, or cut it up and buried it, or pushed it scrap by scrap down the waste disposal unit. But she couldn’t read. She closed it and, in an attempt to make things look tidier, put it with the Sunday papers in the stack on the coffee table. It bothered her to leave those dirty cups there, but she felt it would be a mistake to wash them up. Putting the television back in its proper place in the morning room would also add to the tidiness, and she lugged it across the hall, at last aware that she was quite tired.

There didn’t seem anything else to be done, and the police car hadn’t come back. Now, for the first time since she had wreaked this havoc, she looked long and steadily at George’s body and then, re-entering the drawing room, at the bodies of his wife, his daughter, and his stepson. No pity stirred her and no regret. She did not think of love, joy, peace, rest, hope, life, dust, ashes, waste, want, ruin, madness, and death, that she had murdered love and blighted life, ruined hope, wasted intellectual potential, ended joy, for she hardly knew what these things were. She did not see that she had left carrion men groaning for burial. She thought it a pity about that good carpet getting in such a mess, and she was glad none of the blood had splashed onto her.

Having spent so much time making things look all right, she
was anxious that her good work should be seen. It had always brought her gratification, that the fruit of her labours was admired, though not by a smile or a word had she ever shown her pleasure. Why wait for the police to discover it when she herself was far away? They were about, she thought in her unclear way, they would come quite quickly. The best thing would be for her to tell them without delay. She picked up the phone and had started dialling before she remembered Joan had cut the wires. Never mind, a walk in the fresh air would wake her up.

Eunice Parchman put on her red coat and her woolly hat and scarf. She took a torch from the gun room and set off to walk to Greeving and the phone box outside the village store.

Detective Chief Superintendent William Vetch arrived in Greeving from Scotland Yard on Monday afternoon to take charge of the Coverdale Massacre Case, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

He came to a village few people in the great world had ever heard of but whose name was now on every front page, blazed from every television screen. He found a village where on this first day the inhabitants remained indoors, as if afraid of the open air, as if that open air had changed its quality overnight and become savage, inimical, and threatening. There were people in the village street, but those people were policemen. There were cars, police cars; all night and all day the drive to Lowfield Hall was jammed with the cars and vans of policemen and police photographers and forensic experts. But the people of Greeving were not to be seen, and on that day, February 15, only five men went to work and only seven children to school.