Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘Accident?’ Goin said hoarsely. ‘It could have been an accident?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I saw the boulder that was used to crush his skull in.’ Goin made the same curious noise in his throat again, and I went on: ‘We can’t leave him here and we can’t take him inside. I suggest we leave him in the tractor shed.’

‘Yes, yes, the tractor shed,’ Goin said. He really didn’t know what he was saying.

‘And who’s going to break the news to Miss Haynes?’ I went on. God alone knew that I didn’t fancy doing it.

‘What?’ He was still shocked. ‘What was that?’

‘His wife. She’ll have to be told.’ As a doctor, I supposed I was the one to do it, but the decision was taken from my hands. The cabin door was jerked abruptly open and Judith Haynes, her two dogs by her ankles, stood there framed against the light from the interior, with Otto and the Count just vaguely discernible behind her. She stood there for some little time, a hand on either door jamb, quite immobile and without any expression that I could see, then walked forward in a curiously dreamlike fashion and stooped over her husband. After a few moments she straightened, looked around as if puzzled, then turned questioning eyes on me, but only for a moment, for the questioning eyes turned up in her head and she crumpled and fell heavily across Stryker’s body before I or anyone could get to her.

Conrad and I, with Goin following, brought her inside and laid her on the camp-cot so lately occupied by Smithy. The cocker spaniels had to be forcibly restrained from joining her. Her face was alabaster white and her breathing very shallow. I lifted up her right eyelid and there was no resistance to my thumb: it was only an automatic reaction on my part, it hadn’t even occurred to me that the faint wasn’t genuine. I became aware that Otto was standing close by, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open, his hands clenched together until the ivory knuckles showed.

‘Is she all right?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Will she–’

‘She’ll come to,’ I said.

‘Smelling salts,’ he said. ‘Perhaps–’

‘No.’ Smelling salts, to hasten her recovery to the bitter reality she would have to face.

‘And Michael? My son-in-law? He’s – I mean–’

‘You saw him,’ I said almost irritably. ‘He’s dead, of course he’s dead.’

‘But how – but how–’

‘He was murdered.’ There were one or two involuntary exclamations, the shocked indrawing of breath, then a silence that became intensified with the passing of seconds by the hissing of the Coleman lamps. I didn’t even bother to look up to see what the individual reactions might be for I knew by now that I’d learn nothing that way. I just looked at the unconscious woman and didn’t know what to think. Stryker, the tough, urbane, cynical Stryker had, in his own way, been terrified of this woman. Had it been because of the power she had wielded as Otto’s daughter, his knowledge that his livelihood was entirely dependent on her most wayward whim – and I could imagine few more gifted exponents of the wayward whim than Judith Haynes? Had it been because of her pathological jealousy which I knew beyond all question to exist, because of the instant bitchiness which could allegedly range from the irrational to the insane, or had she held over his head the threat of some nameless blackmail which could bring him at once to his knees? Had he, in his own way, even loved his wife and hoped against hopeless hope that she might reciprocate some of this and been prepared to suffer any humiliation, any insult, in the hope that he might achieve this or part of it? I’d never know, but the questions were academic anyway, Stryker no longer concerned me, I was only turning them over in my mind wondering in what way they could throw any light on Judith Haynes’s totally unexpected reaction to Stryker’s death. She had despised him, she must have despised him for his dependence upon her, his weakness, his meek acceptance of insult, the fear he had displayed before me, for the emptiness and nothingness that had lain concealed behind so impressively masculine a facade. But had she loved him at the same time, loved him for what he had been or might have been, or was she just desolated at the loss of her most cherished whipping-boy, the one sure person in the world upon whom she knew she could with impunity vent her wayward spleen whenever the fancy took her? Even without her awareness of it, he might have become an integral, an indispensable part of her existence, an insidiously woven warp in the weft of her being, always dependable, always there, always ready to hand when she most needed him even when that need was no more than to absorb the grey corrosive poison eating away steadily at the edges of her mind. Even the most tarnished cornerstone can support the most crumbling edifice: take that away and the house comes tumbling down. The traumatic reaction to Stryker’s death could, paradoxically, be the clinching manifestation of a complete and irredeemable selfishness: the as yet unrealized realization that she was the most pitiful of all creatures, a person totally alone.

Judith Haynes stirred and her eyes fluttered open. Memory came back and she shuddered. I eased her to a sitting position and she looked dully around her.

‘Where is he?’ I had to strain to hear the words.

‘It’s all right, Miss Haynes,’ I said, and, just to compound that fatuous statement, added: ‘We’ll look after him.’

‘Where is he?’ she moaned. ‘He’s my husband, my husband. I want to see him.’

‘Better not, Miss Haynes.’ Goin could be surprisingly gentle. ‘As Dr Marlowe says, we’ll take care of things. You’ve seen him already and no good can come–’

‘Bring him in. Bring him in.’ A voice devoid of life but the will absolute. ‘I must see him again.’

I rose and went to the door. The Count barred my way. His aquiline, aristocratic features held a mixture of revulsion and horror. ‘You can’t do that. It’s too ghastly – it’s – it’s macabre.’

‘What do you think that I think it is?’ I felt savage but I know I didn’t sound that way, I think I only sounded tired. ‘If I don’t bring him in, she’ll just go outside again. It’s not much of a night for being outside.’

So we brought him in, the same three of us, Jungbeck and Conrad and myself, and we laid him on his back so that the fearful wound in the occiput didn’t show. Judith Haynes rose from her camp-cot, moved slowly towards him like a person in a dream and sank to her knees. Without moving, she looked at him for some moments then reached out and gently touched the gashed face. No one spoke, no one moved. Not without effort, she pulled his right arm close in to his side, made to do the same with his left, noticed that the fist was still clenched and carefully prised it open.

A brown circular object lay in the palm of his hand. She took it, placed it in the palm of her own hand, straightened – still on her knees – and swung in a slow semi-circle showing us what she held. Then, her hand outstretched towards him, she looked at Allen. We all looked at Allen.

The brown leather button in her hand matched the still remaining buttons on Allen’s torn coat.

I’m not sure how long the silence went on, a silence that the almost intolerable hiss of the lamps and the ululating moan of the south wind served only to deepen. It must have lasted at least ten seconds, although it seemed many times as long, a seemingly interminable period of time during which nobody moved and nothing moved, not even eyes, for Allen’s eyes were fixed on the button in Judith Haynes’s hand in fascinated uncomprehension, while every other eye in the room was on Allen. That one small leather-covered button held us all in thrall.