The Courtesy of Death (19 page)

‘Do you realise that we are all in considerable danger?’ he asked.

‘I realise that you are.’

‘Were. It has switched to you.’

‘Miss Carlis will tell the truth when it comes to the point,’ I said.

‘She can’t, because she has no clear idea what happened.’

I had never quite seen it that way. When I talked to Dunton, the point I made was that she knew it wasn’t me. I may have misled him.

‘She must have seen Jedder charging up out of the darkness.’

‘I doubt if she did. He switched off his light and followed the wall. All she knows is that poor Barnabas was pushed.’

‘She was crying out that he slipped.’

‘I know. We’ll come to that in a minute.’

‘At any rate she can’t for a moment believe I did it.’

‘I was not there, so I have only various descriptions of the scene,’ he said. ‘Nobody saw anything clearly. What Cynthia Carlis did see seems to have terrified her to this
day—a woolly thing rising from the rocks, covered with mud and blood.’

‘She’s not so half-witted as to think it was a troll or something.’

‘No. But it’s more comforting to believe that than what she suspects.’

‘What does she suspect?’

‘Filk, of course!’

‘But what earthly motive?’

‘Jealousy.’

‘But Miss Filk was a little way ahead with her two dogs,’ I protested. ‘It couldn’t possibly have been her.’

‘Couldn’t it? I have never quite understood the set­up. But I see no reason why Filk should not have darted back when the lights went out. Look at it from Miss Carlis’
point of view! We were all close friends of Barnabas. Only Filk had a motive. Filk’s attitude to anyone who hurt her pride was that of a juvenile delinquent. Of course Miss Carlis assumed it
was Filk, but rather than face it and accuse her she preferred the alternative of the unspeakable monster.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Filk lost her nerve. She’s gone to America. Before she left, she told her Cynthia that if anyone started asking questions about the cave she was to get in touch with me at once. She
did. Last night.’

‘But if she thinks Miss Filk pushed Fosworthy she’ll keep her mouth shut and we are safe.’

I see now that the ‘we’ committed me beyond recall—in my own mind, if not in fact.

‘She would, if you had not come along—an old friend of the Fosworthy family—and claimed to know all about it. She is terrified of what you might do.’

I replied that she would see sense soon enough, after I had sworn in court that Jedder cut off the light.

‘Or was it you who cut it off? What help do you think you’ll get from a shallow woman who is lonely and afraid? What sense as soon as she knows the monster was you? You killed one of
Filk’s dogs and frightened her out of her wits. You blew up Jedder and tortured him. You shot at our popular and harmless Bank Manager. And your subsequent disappearance was a positive epic
of petty crime. Who do you think she is going to say killed Barnabas?’

‘All very pretty!’ I answered as coolly as I could. ‘But you don’t want to put it to the test any more than I do. How’s Jedder? Or is that another of my murders on
the list?’

‘They say he will recover. But I needn’t tell you the police are suspicious.’

He explained that Jedder’s three friends—the Bank Manager cleared off promptly after lighting their way out and telephoning for an ambulance—had succeeded in spite of their
abject nervousness in faking an explosion before the police arrived at dawn. They found .22 cartridges in Jedder’s gun-room down at the farm and put some in a flat wooden box: the sort of box
a man could conceivably stamp on by accident. They bored a hole in the lid through which they inserted one of the remaining detonators and a length of fuse. Enough of the cartridges blew up to be
convincing, always provided that the story of accident was never questioned. If it was, laboratory examination would prove at once that neither wood nor brass matched the splinters in
Jedder’s leg.

‘And has it been questioned?’ I asked.

‘Not so far as I know. But the police are showing a tactful interest in our meetings, which they think may have been—well, bizarre in the extreme.’

‘What sort of bizarre?’

‘Do I know? Mysterious rites. Black magic. Gunpowder and sulphur—’ it was the first time I had ever heard him laugh. ‘They must be thinking of pantomimes and the devil
popping through a trap door in a cloud of smoke. But if Miss Carlis starts mentioning caves—just imagine the teams of ardent pot-holers and the finding of Fosworthy’s body! You can
never make any money now, Yarrow.’

I told him that I never had any such intention. He shrugged off the words as if he appreciated that I had to practise my lie. He did not try at all to believe that I had helped Fosworthy simply
from pity or whatever it was. I reminded him that Fosworthy aroused affection and concern in any decent human being, and asked him how he could have treated a man he loved so cruelly. I could
understand shutting him up until he promised to keep quiet about their private chapel of the animals. I could even understand that the temptation to remove me—since it was almost without
risk—had been very strong. But it was beyond me, I said, that he could have brought himself to murder Fosworthy merely because he was loyal to me.

‘He would have stopped at nothing to protect you.’

‘Then you should have faced it.’

‘Why? You give such strange importance to dissolution. To kill is only to deprive ourselves. A man is the same as any other higher animal. He is indestructible.’

What is one to call such a creed? All the religions insist to us that we must have faith; yet what these fanatics needed was a theologian to preach to them that they must not have too much
faith. In fact, now that I come to think of it, that is about what Fosworthy did. As soon as he suddenly started to value romantic love, he lost interest in his mere survival; it was what he could
take with him or rediscover that became important.

It was useless to argue with a man who felt as litde guilt—or as much—at putting down a human being as putting down an old cow, so I returned crudely to the problem of Cynthia Carlis
and asked him what he had in mind when he telephoned me.

‘I have only one arm and no strength,’ he replied. ‘But if you agree I am going to put myself in your hands.’

‘Like hell you are! What’s the proposal?’

‘I only see one way to calm Miss Carlis. I feel that Barnabas’ body should be found somewhere else—on an inaccessible ledge, say, in the Cheddar Gorge where he could have
fallen and remained for weeks undiscovered.’

‘What good does that do?’

I saw, of course, that it would be helpful if nothing more than Jedder’s private, well-lit hobby were revealed whenever police investigated the cave. But removing the body did not seem to
affect Undine’s apprehensions one way or the other.

‘The coroner’s verdict is accident. Barnabas used to take long walks alone, and the medical evidence will show that he was killed by a fall,’ Aviston-Tresco explained.
‘That puts an end to her sense of the thing being unfinished and dangerous. She would even be able to send some flowers. I’m not being cynical. She is a very conventional woman and she
was fond of him. Flowers would act as a tranquilliser. And what then? Filk comes rushing back from America. They settle for the unknown person in the cave—neither of us are going to name
him—and live happily ever after.’

I said that I certainly should not interfere and that he had better get on with it.

‘Without Alan Jedder I can’t. What use am I?’

‘What about his three thugs? Can’t you trust them?’

‘One. He can stay at the hatch. The other two—nothing will ever get them near the barn again.’

‘I thought you people were above fear.’

‘Of dissolution, yes. If it were still the law, I would not mind being executed. But to be imprisoned for years, to be without my friends, the hills, the animals—that I dread.
Hanging settles nothing and is humane.’

‘Like the vet’s incinerator,’ I retorted in an attempt to get through his armour.

‘Yes, if the animal is very small,’ he answered, quite undisturbed except for a note of deep melancholy in his voice.

‘Or a car seat, if it isn’t.’

‘You are a man of great courage,’ he said, ignoring my remark as if it were both petty and in bad taste. ‘Come with me and get up the body!’

‘I’m damned if I do!’

‘Then I must tell Cynthia Carlis that the monster was you.’

‘In that case it will be a long fight. I shall get a concession for the picture postcards to pay my legal expenses.’

‘I will accept any conditions you like. I shall be a hostage, completely at your mercy.’

That was true enough so far as it went and if I could devise absolute safeguards. So I asked him what the depth of the abyss was.

‘About seventy feet. We can use Jedder’s winch. If you lower me, I am capable of tying Barnabas to the rope with one hand. After you have pulled him up, you are free to pull me up or
leave me there as you like.’

He knew as well as I did that I shouldn’t leave him there, much as I should enjoy it in principle. I told him to lay off the pathos, and asked how we were to get back through the
hatch.

‘You go first. I cannot stop you.’

‘The man up top can.’

‘Make your own conditions!’

It seemed to me that I ought to be able to concoct some watertight conditions. I did not entirely accept his arguments. But once Fosworthy’s death had been officially accepted as accident,
it became pointless to accuse me of anything. Besides that, there was a conventional streak in me which was in some sympathy with Undine. I, too, should be ‘tranquillised’ by knowing
that the body was in a West Country churchyard rather than that vile place.

‘Among my other petty crimes,’ I said, ‘is the illegal possession of a .45 revolver. Any monkey business and I use it on you.’

‘I have to accept that.’

‘As soon as Fosworthy’s body is in the gallery, the man on top will come down. I shall then go up the ladder and leave the rest to him.’

‘Provided you lend a hand from on top, if necessary.’

I then saw a possible catch. There would be only one man at the hatch when Aviston-Tresco and I went down, but there might be two or more when I was ready to come up.

‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ Aviston-Tresco replied. ‘I can only swear that there isn’t more than one. If there was, I would use him, not you. Look at it this way! You
are a far more dangerous brute than any of us. Your hypothetical other man could very well fail to kill you, as the Bank Manager did. You would then be justified in using that .45 of yours, closing
the hatch on the bodies and going away. You are unknown. If you had been presentable and unhurt last time, you were in the clear. This time—well, I suggest a clothes brush as well as your
.45.’

‘What makes you think that the winch can be moved single-handed?’

‘Experience. I’ve done it. It just needs a crowbar to lever the wheels over ridges.’

‘Suppose your weight pulls it over the edge? The floor of the passage slopes towards the drop.’

‘Jedder used to anchor it to anything handy.’

I could not remember anything handy, and warned him that the job would take some time. I then cross-questioned him about their plans after I had left and the hatch was closed up again. He told
me that his associate owned land close to the edge of the Cheddar Gorge. He was going to use a tractor and trailer, the wheelmarks of which would not be new to the field. He would lower the body by
a rope and then go down himself to arrange it convincingly,

‘I think you ought to know a lot more about police procedure than you do,’ I said. ‘Mysterious falls are not accepted so easily.’

He talked me out of that. Anyway I did not greatly care. It was they, not I, who would have to stand the racket if they slipped up. One thing in all this was certain and constant: that they
would never mention the cave if I did not.

Caution was wide awake; but, so far as his personality went, I was partly anaesthetised by him as if I had been that little animal he mentioned. Apart from his obsession with the insignificance
of death, he was a man out of my own West Country childhood—able, quiet, welcome in any society. And pity counted. God knows he did not deserve it! But if we limit our pity to those who do,
bang goes Christian civilisation.

We fixed the date for three nights later at 10 p.m. in the barn. He was too eager to discuss with me how I should travel and by what route I should reach Jedder’s farm, so I told him
nothing. I was not going to allow him to count on any movements of mine beyond my presence at the appointed time.

In the course of the next two days I gave much thought to the question of whether I should take my car or not and decided against it. I did not want to leave the slightest evidence of my visit
to the district. There was no large public car park except in Wells or Glastonbury—where I could not risk being seen—and a car left in a small village or by the side of a lane can
always arouse curiosity.

So I went down by train from London to Weston-super-Mare and then took a tourist bus to the Cheddar Caves. When the pubs opened I ate a hearty early supper, unnoticed among the crowd of
sightseers, and started to walk across the bleak top of the Mendips towards Jedder’s farm which was about six miles away. There was nothing on my back or in my pockets to show who I was.
While I did not expect any trouble, I was taking no chances.

I was dressed in a stout windbreaker and cord trousers with a light knapsack on my back. It contained the revolver, a really powerful electric lantern and, as an insurance policy, a few cans of
food and a flask of whisky. I had also the clothes brush which Aviston-Tresco had suggested and another windbreaker, dark blue instead of dark red, which I carried partly to soften the lumps in the
knapsack and partly to change my appearance in case that should be advisable. I was confident that I should be in command of any trouble underground, but the more I thought of their vague plans for
the disposal of poor Fosworthy, the more I distrusted them.