The Courtesy of Death (11 page)

So far as we could tell, they were now examining the blocked entrance where they must have been impressed by Fosworthy’s burrowings. Aviston-Tresco still was calling. The wail of his voice
through the black emptiness at last got on Fosworthy’s nerves. He jumped to his feet before I could stop him and shouted:

‘You can go to blazes, Tom! I’ll get out of here yet!’

He sounded like a cocky schoolboy. He really was the most contradictory man. A pity that he ever had a fixed income behind which he could retire! If he had been compelled to come to terms with
the world, he was as likely to have ended up as a mad mercenary in the Congo as a vegetarian in a country cottage.

They came running back, but it was impossible for them to fix the direction of the sound. I whispered to Fosworthy to lie still and shut up, reminding him of the gun under Jedder’s arm. He
apologised, far too loud, for forgetting his duty to protect me.

‘We had better have the lights on,’ Jedder said.

He had arranged a relay system for this. He walked round the next corner and yelled ‘Light!’ Far away I heard the call repeated. Then there was silence while some other helper
presumably shouted the message back. The lights came on.

The pair did not attempt to look for Fosworthy. From their point of view, he might be anywhere—the maze of rock where he actually was or in some cleft or above or below them—and half
a dozen strides would take him into darkness. Aviston-Tresco wanted, I believe, to avoid that, and was genuinely anxious that his former friend should dissolve without the long agony of starvation
and blindness.

‘There will be a meeting tonight, Barnabas,’ he said in a voice which would have been normal and inviting if the sinister echoes had not repeated it.

They retired slowly towards the changing-room, carrying out some perfunctory searches on the way to look for my dead or prostrated body. I suspected that Jedder was not quite convinced that
Aviston-Tresco had dealt with me successfully. He liked to have space and plenty of light around him and was continually turning round in case the unknown was following him. It was. We did in fact
make some distance towards the entrance before the lights went out; but it was impossible to get ahead of the pair or to attack from behind.

Just in time we had passed the stretch of track with the foul drop on the right and were now in one of the finest caverns, high and with many openings, though most of them were dead ends. The
only sane course was to stay exactly where we were till the time of the meeting. If we were not to exhaust ourselves looking for each other, we had to keep in actual, physical touch.

I asked Fosworthy what on earth Aviston-Tresco and that grim-faced brute Jedder were doing in his circle, some of whom would refuse to swat a mosquito. He accused me in his most academic tone of
not paying attention to his precious synthesis and had another shot at it—now very much clearer since he was not distracted into mysticism by the presence of the paintings.

I will explain it very shortly at the risk of losing the metaphysical undertones. His unworldly, kindly little sect believed that all living things were individual radiations from a Whole and
therefore equally worthy of respect. Yet they could not help seeing, being surrounded by a rural, traditional society, that the hunters of foxes, the fishers of trout and the shooters of game had a
far more sympathetic understanding of animals than they did.

Put it this way! If a tame fox could choose the most loving and generous boss for himself, he would certainly pick a master of fox hounds, not a well-intentioned Fosworthy.

This, however, did not bother them so much as the paradox of Aviston-Tresco. All of them felt great admiration for him, yet his profession involved as much killing as healing. They were groping
for the common ground between those who detested killing, those who had to do it and those who found it healthy and natural, when Jedder discovered the paintings. There were these ancestors of ours
accepting that there was no difference between themselves and the animals, certain that the spirits of all continued to exist, yet killing to eat as steadily as any sabre-tooth tiger.

So all of them arrived at the madly logical conclusion that since Life was one and survival unavoidable, killing was immaterial. But admittedly it caused pain and inconvenience. Therefore it
must be carried out with formality and a request for forgiveness.

Absurd? Well, meet the eyes of any bird or animal which is dying by your hand! In the last throes the eyes, which at first were terrified, accept what is coming. I have never said ‘Forgive
me!’ but I recognise that I have wanted to. I cannot pretend to know, as those fanatics did, what the mammoth was thinking as its life drained out, but I am sure what that brilliantly
perceptive artist and his fellow hunters were thinking.

I have no way of reconstructing the steps by which a vet, a handful of vegetarians and a few sportsmen came to find consolation in the same creed. Obviously they were all intensely religious in
the sense that they wanted answers to unanswerable questions. Before I turned up, it had never occurred to Aviston-Tresco and Jedder that taking the life of a man was no different to taking that of
an animal, but once they had convinced themselves that Fosworthy and I threatened their peace, it did occur to them.

‘What caused the row?’ I asked him.

‘I told you. I wanted my woman. I said that what happens to love after dissolution was the only essential, that it was nonsense to talk of momentary inconvenience. A bird in the
hand—if I may permit the vernacular to simplify my argument—is worth two in the bush. It was all so vital to me that I did, as Tom Aviston-Tresco said, threaten to make the controversy
public and the cave too. I fear that sometimes my voice grows too excited. They thought I was out of my mind. People do, you know. I think you yourself were at first unsure of my sanity.’

I was. But even this explanation did not wholly account for the persistence with which Fosworthy had been hunted down.

‘And then I ran out,’ he went on, ‘with all of them shouting after me. Eventually they put me under restraint.’

‘Suppose Aviston-Tresco had caught you before you reached me, what would he have done?’

‘Put me back.’

‘Where?’

‘Here.’

‘You mean, you were held here? All alone?’

‘Yes. Until I would give my word of honour to keep silent.’

There at least they understood his character. It was unthinkable that so scrupulous a formalist would break his promise, even if given under duress.

‘For how long?’

‘It was very disturbing in the dark. Especially to a person of my temperament.’

‘How long do you think?’ I repeated.

‘Jedder cut off the light and took away my matches. It was not until I reached you that I found it had been only twenty-four hours. I must indeed have seemed to you distraught.’

‘And how did you get out in the end?’

‘I am much afraid they drove me to violence when they came down to see if I were ready to surrender. As they were not expecting such behaviour from me, it was temporarily successful. But
not decisive. Aviston-Tresco was already half-way up the ladder behind me when I got out of the hatch.’

So there at last was the full motive. It was not wholly because they wanted to protect the cave and to go on contemplating their discovery in peace. Above all they wanted to protect their
precious selves, like most other criminals.

Those potentially dangerous people, as Dunton had called them, flared up at the very thought that their private chapel might be vulgarised and, to them, desecrated; then they were even more
alarmed that Fosworthy might report what they, prominent and respectable local citizens, had done to him; and finally, when they were convinced that both their secret and their cruelty had come to
the knowledge of a stranger who was only out to make money, at least two of them decided that dissolution—their gende and fatuous euphemism—was the only way out.

We slept for some hours, huddled together to keep ourselves warm, and were awakened by the line of lamps. The big cavern where we were concealed was fairly well lit. Jedder, impressed by it, had
at some time climbed up to fix two overhead lights. In contrast, the darkness of the holes was absolute. We found one which offered several ways of retreat.

They came in a trailing group through the cave, following the lit passage. Aviston-Tresco was not with them. His exertions in the early morning must have been too much for his lacerated forearm.
The appearance of the three men who led the way made it likely that they were sporting farmers, but they had not the tough, humorous faces of the breed. Though it may have been the hard light on
high cheekbones, they seemed to me to have a common quality of cold, puritan self-discipline. I’d have trusted any of them where money was concerned, but run a mile from any contact with his
private emotions. Then came the Bank Manager accompanied by a mild friend of the Fosworthy type with a thin, fair beard.

Miss Filk followed, a square and decisive Diana, leading two of her Dobermans. It said something for their training that they could negotiate the ladder. She made the casual group look like a
procession, and I felt that her hounds would not be out of place in the painted cave. That seemed to be the lot, and I had high hopes of running for the entrance as soon as they had passed out of
the cavern. Whatever Fosworthy said, the chap left in charge of the hatch and the switches was going to experience violence if I could get at him.

And then, behind the rest, came Jedder with Undine. She was well wrapped in a fur coat of her own. Her slender neck vanished into its illusory protection like a pencil of cascading waiter into
rock. Impossible not to speculate on where it went. Difficult to accept the answer: nowhere. I must admit that in the underworld she was exquisite.

I could see that she had not been let into the secret before. The wonder and excitement in her face were genuine. Jedder and Aviston-Tresco had taken a chance that she would keep silent out of
loyalty to Miss Filk or else they meant to give her a formal Apology later—in which case they might well have received one in return from her formidable protector.

It was hopeless. Fosworthy rushed away from me, grotesque as some emaciated ape from the depths of the limestone, hobbling on one foot with his filthy sheepskin flying behind him. His Dulcinea
received him with her usual immaculate sweetness. She had clearly been warned that this was; likely to happen. She knew from her own experience that he was wildly eccentric in spite of his strange
charm, and she may have thought it a kindly act to trap him for his friends.

‘You never told me you had joined us,’ he said. ‘I never knew.’

‘But you will come back with me?’

‘It’s quite all right, Barnabas,’ Jedder assured him.

He was in a daze of weakness, and in the presence of his Undine only capable of worship. I think that’s the right word. I doubt if he formulated to himself precisely the tracing of those
veins with hands and lips as that Midlands psychiatrist did. He was just certain that present and future were worthless without unspecified union with her. And now the outer world beckoned and
Jedder approved and she was willing to be escorted by him back to the light.

But even so he did not forget me. His chivalry, his self-imposed duty to protect me, came up against his infatuation and won.

‘I would like, if I may, to accompany you all,’ he said.

I knew him well enough to see what he was up to. Whenever Fosworthy stopped to reflect, one could hear the wheels go round. He had calculated that if all the party went on peacefully towards the
painted cave the way was clear for me to reach the hatch.

Jedder, too, hesitated. I don’t know what instructions he had received from Aviston-Tresco or what he had in store for Fosworthy. The position was very tricky. All those people in the cave
knew that Fosworthy had disappeared and why. But how had he returned? Possibly it had been explained to them that he had been found and was being held downstairs until other arrangements could be
made. That was a good enough story for the milder souls who were appalled at the thought that he might impetuously publicise their secret but were quite incapable of murdering him.

Jedder had to make up his mind quickly. I am sure that the unexpected and convenient spot where Fosworthy had appeared made it up for him. He sent the others on, and allowed Fosworthy to follow
with his enchantress. As soon as they had entered the passage which led out of the cavern, he ran after them. I was just about to get clear of my hiding-place when I saw him reach up and cut the
loop of wire which turned the corner. At once and very silently he rushed up the familiar passage before anyone could recover from surprise and start feeling for matches or flashlights. Neither
Fosworthy nor his girl had one. I heard the yell—of protest rather than terror—as Fosworthy went over the edge of the abyss, and Jedder shouting:

‘Oh my God, he’s slipped!’

There was nothing I could do. I was in absolute blackness. The whole party returned to the cavern. Some of them now had electric torches in hand, and I watched the beams and points of light
flashing nervously all over the place, occasionally lighting a face, usually the lower part of a body. It was a world of shadows and unrecognisable half-humans. I shut my eyes against it and prayed
that Fosworthy had been right and that he had in fact dissolved into an existence sunlit and forgiving, not into a hell without certainties such as he had left behind.

Undine was sobbing with shock.

‘He was walking just outside me,’ she kept on saying. ‘Outside me to protect me from the drop.’

‘I tried to catch him as he slipped,’ Jedder insisted.

They yammered uncontrollably, and Miss Filk’s dogs, catching the mood, began to bark. A voice remarked:

‘We have to leave him there. It’s better so.’

‘It will avoid questions,’ Jedder agreed. ‘And I promise you that only three of us know he was ever found.’

I could bear it no longer. I was light-headed with fatigue and hunger and sorrow. If I had not relieved myself by some expression I should have charged out and run amok.