The Courtesy of Death (14 page)

I untied his hands and put him on my back. It was not easy to hoist him up the companion, but there again experience counted. I had done this before in my career—many times in practice and
once in earnest when I had been just as weak from smoke as I now was from hunger. He complicated the lift by making a grab for the gun which I was foolishly trying to carry as well. I had no mercy
on him after that. I dragged him along the gallery by his good leg, leaving myself a hand free.

When we were crouching below the hatch I told him to shout. He seemed unwilling. So I had to point out again that, though we both knew I could not kill him, I was prepared to go on working over
him until there was nothing left but a voice.

He shouted all right at the first touch, but it did no good whatever. The Bank Manager may have replaced some of the hay and deadened sound. More probably he was in such a state of panic that he
had left the barn and was skulking outside, all ready to bolt for safety if any stranger came along.

‘You’ve got me. I know it,’ Jedder gasped in the silence. ‘But listen to me! You have to keep quiet about all this. For God’s sake, don’t you see
it?’

I told him to explain quickly what he meant, and that it was no use wasting time. If his friends got clear and came crawling along the gallery I should shoot them down without mercy.

‘I mean that if you go to the police, you will find yourself charged with the murder of Barnabas Fosworthy.’

I told him to go to hell, that it was no good trying to bluff me with such damned idiocy and that anyway Miss Carlis knew how Fosworthy died.

‘She thought he slipped until you terrified her,’ he answered. ‘And then her good Filk gibbering with hysteria! She likes to think that what killed Fosworthy wasn’t
human. A thing! She doesn’t know it was you. She’s a shallow fool. You’d know it if you had ever met her.’

So they were not aware that I had. That could be useful, and worth exploring further.

‘Fosworthy confided in me that he intended to meet her at the Pavilion Hotel,’ I said. ‘What was she told when he never turned up?’

It suited his game to answer, and the story was credible. It all came pouring out between spasms of pain while I kept the beam of the torch on his nervously working face.

Miss Filk appeared at the hotel later that day and tried to patch up the quarrel. She explained to her Cynthia that Fosworthy had fits of believing that he had enemies and that his only safety
was in disappearing. A very common delusion. I myself had at first wondered if that was his trouble.

Undine was not convinced and returned to Bath. Miss Filk kept after her. Her need for the wretched girl’s friendship overcame discretion. She told her that Fosworthy’s mind had given
way completely, that he had gone down a cave and would not come out. This infuriated Jedder and Aviston-Tresco, but they had to submit to Miss Filk. She was too dangerous and unpredictable. She
insisted that her ward should see Fosworthy and be cured of her interest in him. She knew that he would appear insane after days alone in the darkness, even if he was not.

‘And my motive for murdering Fosworthy?’ I asked, returning to the main point.

‘That’s for the police to say when they find his body. Accounts will prove you bribed him. What for, if not to show you the cave? Aviston-Tresco and I tried to interfere but were
brutally attacked by you. We were all alarmed at the thought of you and Fosworthy underground together—one of you unbalanced and the other violent. So we came down to the rescue. We found
neither of you.’

‘Why didn’t you report it?’

‘We thought you had both left. It was only when we came back after twelve days that we suspected you had killed him. And you then tried to kill us.’

‘It won’t stand up for a moment,’ I said.

‘Are you sure? While you were away—’ I could have torn him apart for that “away” ‘—Aviston-Tresco’s arm has been amputated. Then you blew me up
with a land-mine. You can’t deny either. Won’t that suggest to a jury that you stick at nothing? If you talk, Yarrow, you’re in for a difficult case in which the evidence of
respectable, local citizens will be stacked against you. You and your counsel may convince the jury that your story is true and ours is invented, but is it worth the gamble? Is it worth awaiting
trial in gaol? So dangerous a man will not get bail.’

I was not up to arguing. It was highly unlikely that I could not get the lot of them convicted. On the other hand it was true enough that I should be in for many unpleasant and anxious
months.

‘So you will leave me alone if I leave you alone?’

‘Of course! Why should we start anything up? I don’t want all the scandal and fifteen years in gaol at the end of it.’

From my unrevealing darkness I replied that I should do my best to get it for him and that I was not going to spend the next year or two looking over my shoulder. Their interest in my death was
too strong. It would solve all their problems.

‘For God’s sake, we’re a small band of harmless countrymen or were till you turned up!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re not assassins trained to take risks. A bungled
attempt on you would be the end of us. You are quite safe so long as we are.’

I agreed to think it over, but refused to give my word.

‘I don’t want …’

His face had gone dead white. That he had been able to force out so many words before collapse impressed me with his argument, perhaps too strongly. He pulled himself back from unconsciousness
for a last retort:

‘I don’t want your word, damn you!’

I never worked with more anxiety to bring anyone round. I went back to the changing-room to get a coat, and packed him in that and my own. No sugar, hot tea or alcohol. Nothing but water colder
than he was. As a last resort I loosened the bandage above his knee and let him bleed a bit. To my surprise that worked. He opened his eyes and murmured:

‘I shall not dissolve. He’s bound … to open up … soon.’

It was all of an hour before very cautiously he did.

I raved at the Bank Manager that his friends were lost in the darkness and that Jedder would die if he couldn’t get help quick. He threw the hatch wide open, shone a torch down the shaft
and saw that I was telling the truth.

‘Drop that ladder at once, you fool!’

This only reduced him to dithering.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he wailed, more to himself than to me. ‘I don’t know what to do. All this! It will be the end of me.’

I heard him pacing round the rim of the open hatch, and stop suddenly as if he had forced himself to a decision.

‘I won’t come down until you are out,’ he said.

I had to accept that, though I was suspicious. The ladder came down far too readily, all in a nervous rush which nearly landed the foot of it on Jedder. Had it occurred to him that when my head
came up to ground level I should be at his mercy? Well, if it had, there was little I could do about it. I could only trust to his character. He was a peaceable, very white-collared citizen,
needing his office chair to take decisions. His fear of the Law and of insecurity was desperate enough to screw him up to hit, but he was sure to do it inefficiently. The game was to play on his
nerves.

I climbed within two feet of the top and stopped to listen. He, too, was silent, which again suggested that I shouldn’t trust him. We had arrived at another impasse. He could not now
withdraw the ladder, but he could, if I tried him too hard, slam down the hatch on the top of it. His somewhat bronchial breathing revealed that he was waiting for me near the edge behind the
ladder, where the back of my head would come into sight first.

Naturally I had taken the gun with me. Quickly raising it in one hand so that the barrels were just in the open and the butt against the wall of the shaft, I fired. Of course I missed him, but
probably not by much. In any case this was altogether too brutal a business for him. I shot out of the hatch, and there he was crouching in the hay, trying to dissociate himself from the huge beam
of wood at his side. I cannot believe that he could ever have raised and dropped it in time. Perhaps he meant to swing it at me like a battering ram.

I had no use for him at all. I ordered him to get his friends out first, and then telephone for an ambulance. This was quite instinctive and showed that for the moment I had accepted
Jedder’s proposal. I wanted them to have the hay bales back on the hatch and Jedder laid out on the floor of the barn before public authorities arrived. What story they told was their own
business.

The key was in the door. When I had turned it and was out on the open hills, I felt relief too overwhelming for anger or revenge. The night sky, intolerably welcome, was dark blue to my eyes,
and the red and white of the stars were vivid as candles on a Christmas tree.

I trotted away between the shadowy barrows of the dead and over the springing turf of the sheep lands on much the same route that Fosworthy must have taken when he was just a jump ahead of
Aviston-Tresco. Remembering his appearance, I stopped somewhere above The Green Man and its hamlet wondering what I in my turn must look like. I had never gone to the trouble of hanging up a
lantern in the changing-room to find out. The inside of me was alarming enough without bothering about the outside.

My unthinking intention had been to take the first available public transport back to London. That now seemed unwise. Whether Jedder was dead or alive, his injuries were curious enough to
interest the police, however firmly his friends stuck to an improbable story. Suspicious characters—and I certainly was that—were likely to be asked to account for themselves.

So I could not reach London as I was, nor did The Green Man offer safety. Well-disposed though the Gorms were, I was not capable of inventing a story which would explain my appearance. The only
possible friend to whom I could go was Dr Dunton. He would be inclined to believe me, since he knew something of the human background.

His house was down in the plain, only five miles off across the valley as the crow flies. But I was no crow. As soon as I started to stumble down the steep escarpment I was overcome by
exhaustion, tripping over obstacles which, when I looked at them, were barely visible. The grey dawn showed a melancholy field of wheat surrounded by grey dry-stone walls. I crawled into it.

When I woke, the sun was well up and breakfast of a sort was all round me. I rubbed the ears of wheat between my hands and licked up the little piles of kernels. Perhaps I was not so hungry as I
thought, or else I kept closing my eyes against the sun which hurt them. However it was, I went fast asleep again.

In the afternoon I was sharply woken up by a dog which jumped the wall, raced barking towards me and then retreated cautiously to its master who had stopped alarmingly near, pretending a mistake
had been made. Its nose may have distinguished at close quarters what my recent diet had been. I was uneasy at setting up a presumption of guilt by being discovered in hiding, and decided that
there was no object in hanging about till nightfall. The best bet was to strike straight across country while I could see where I was going and to reach Dunton’s house soon after dusk. I was
probably right. The easier route was round by the road through nearly linked villages and the outskirts of Wells, but at that time of year, even after dark, it was far too public.

North of Westbury I slipped across the Cheddar road, crossed the railway and was soon in trouble on Westbury Moor. Seen from the hillside, the fields and hedges of the rich valley looked easily
passable. I ought to have noticed the willows. There was not a hedge without a stream beneath it or a field which was not cut by a deep drain. It was as bad as being tied up in irrigated paddy
fields. Movement would have been simpler in the Dark Ages when the damned place was an estuary instead of splendid pasture at nearly sea level. At high tide Arthur and the mourning women could have
sailed straight off from Glastonbury to the Western Isles.

So I had to wade to a causeway and follow the little lane on top of it. I could not help being conspicuous. A farm tractor chugged past me and nearly stopped, but the driver thought better of
it. Some children took one look and bogged themselves to the knees in their anxiety to get off the track and away from me.

This forced me to take more serious stock of myself. I had a fortnight’s growth of beard, matted with filth. The bruise on my jaw had gone down, but beneath it was a jagged wound in the
neck which, my fingers told me, had healed at the bottom and was still open at the top. It was leaking a little and must have looked disgusting. I couldn’t hide it, for the buttons had gone
from my shirt. The state of the collar was, anyway, worse.

My appearance was more forbidding than I had ever realised. My clothes were not torn as badly as Fosworthy’s, but were stiff with a cement of limestone dust, earth from the gallery and
blood—streaks of mine down the front of my coat, streaks of Doberman’s down the back and spots of Jedder’s. From the knees down, I was soggy with the black mud of the ditches.

And now there was a second main road which had to be crossed with no chance of avoiding people and houses. My lane led me slap into the village of Henton. Since I could not get round it without
swimming, I elected to make a dash for the telephone box and ask Dunton to drive out and pick me up. Then I found that I had not got four pennies. Pound notes, yes. But all loose change had fallen
out of my pockets when I was upside down or collapsed.

Who the hell ever has four pennies except a rep. prepared for telephoning? If you want to telephone in this island you must first go into a shop and get change. Buy something for
twopence—if you can think of anything which only costs twopence—offer sixpence, ask for pennies and not the halfpennies you are sure to be offered, and then find a public box in working
order. For the returned exile or the foreign visitor it is easier to back a horse than to telephone.

While I hesitated, a man strode briskly round the corner towards me. He had a mass of wind-blown white hair and an ash plant for a walking stick. I could not avoid him and summed him up as best
I could. He seemed to be one of the mild, exaggeratedly healthy people by whom that part of the county was infested. At a guess, retired and sixtyish, though appearing in his late forties. Probably
a militant atheist or devoted to some local religion. But on that point I was prejudiced.