Gillian Galbraith - Where The Shadow Falls

‘Yes,’ Nicholas replied baldly, interlinking his fingers to control the shaking that had begun in his hands.

‘For many years?’

‘For forty-five years and three months exactly.’

‘Why didn’t you come forward to help us… when the Sheriff was killed? You must have known; it was in all the papers.’

Another simple question to which no simple answer could be provided. Difficult to think where to begin, but a start must be made somewhere. The incompatibility of their early relationship with James’ advancement, perhaps? Or the motor neurone disease? The amitriptyline, even? Something must be said, seconds were ticking by. But Christ, what? He felt like a snail being torn out of its shell, soon to be exposed in all its vulnerability.

‘I’ll tell you, Sergeant, as best as I can.’ She appeared sympathetic; maybe she would listen, even comprehend. Certainly, silence was no longer an option.

‘My relationship with James has never been public. If it had been you would have been here much sooner. We are just an old married couple really… but nobody, well almost nobody, knew that. I mean KNEW that. Some suspected, maybe others guessed. James’ career had to be protected, you see, and to be honest, his privacy, our privacy… what business was it of anyone else? But the tabloids would have taken a prurient interest in James-gay Sheriff found dead-in both of us, I suppose. Now? Now, maybe it is acceptable, but then it wasn’t, and we got used to things the way they were. Why should he, or I, put up with being called an “old poof” and all the other far more unpleasant things that go with such a label? Why should we, on sufferance only, be allowed into polite society? And what a misnomer that is! We managed very well without them all.’

‘So, you didn’t come forward as you didn’t want the nature of your relationship to become public?’

‘Yes, that’s partially true. It was part of the reason, but there was another, too, which you may or may not understand…’ His speech ended, nervousness having drained him of all energy. It felt so unreal, listening to his own voice laying bare their lives, exposing secrets that should have gone to the grave with them.

‘Go on, please, Mr Lyon.’

‘About eight months ago James began to have difficulty with his words. Not in remembering them or anything like that. More, in articulating them, his voice changed and his speech seemed to become slurred. Sometimes badly so, especially when he was tired. Next thing, he couldn’t swallow his food, kept choking, and it frightened him. It frightened me, too, actually. I had to learn the Heimlich manoeuvre, for all the good it did. Eventually, I bullied him into seeing a neurologist, and the man carried out various tests, scans and so on and then we got the news…’ The old man paused again as if reliving the moment.

‘The news?’ Alice prompted.

‘The news that he had motor neurone disease, a form of it anyway, something called “progressive bulbar palsy” to be exact. James’s intelligence would remain unaffected but, slowly, inexorably, crucial muscles would cease to function until, eventually, he wouldn’t be able to breathe unassisted.’

‘Why would that mean that you wouldn’t come forward when James was murdered?’

‘I am coming to that,’ the man said reproachfully, twisting and untwisting his hands. ‘James was a very determined man, you know. I would have nursed him until the end, I didn’t care. But he decreed otherwise and was implacable. He decided that he would end his own life. The thought of God’s reaction troubled him for a bit, but he concluded that no benign deity, worthy of such a name, would expect any creature to suffer a slow, terrifying death if an alternative quick, clean one was available. Even if that alternative death was suicide. So, he began planning his end. He did it meticulously, like everything else he did. He didn’t fancy Switzerland, that… er… Dignitas set-up. He chose the house in Moray Place. He used the house, particularly, during the week, and I think he saw it as the home of his ancestors in an almost Japanese way and thought it would be fitting to return-to wherever-from there. Also, and crucially, he didn’t want me involved in any way.’

‘Involved in what respect?’

‘In his suicide. If he had done it in Geanbank then… well, that was ours. Our home. I almost never went to Moray Place. It had always been his, whatever other houses we owned. He was going to take my amitriptyline-old stuff, I got it when my mother died-and the Brahms double violin concerto. Said he’d like to go listening to celestial music with a dram or two for company. I suspected when he left here on Monday afternoon that he’d determined to do it that evening. He’d choked at lunchtime and some of the muscles in his tongue had begun to twitch. Anyway, it was so different when he said goodbye. He didn’t cry or anything like that, James almost never cried, but he looked hollow… lost… it’s hard to explain. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t. He said if I had no involvement, knew nothing about it, then I’d be quite safe from the Police. I phoned the house the next morning and there was no reply. I was in the process of collecting my things to go there when Liv called.’

‘Liv?’ Alice interrupted.

‘Liv Nordquist, our neighbour. She knew-about us, I mean. James trusted her completely. She knew about the disease too. She told me that James had been murdered… and that you, the Police, were already involved. So I’ve been waiting for you to come.’

Finally, Nicholas Lyon looked into the policewoman’s eyes and she nodded her head for him to continue.

‘That’s it, really. Why I didn’t come forward. In the papers it wasn’t “Gay Sheriff found murdered”. No. No-one could speculate about some homosexual crime of passion, or any of that sort of thing. And, yes, I believed that James was going to die that night but not… that he was going to be killed. I reckoned you’d come to me in the end. You see, James had lived as straight in the world, but my very existence made that a lie. And all I cared about, then, was that he was dead. Nothing else mattered.’

After the policewoman had gone, Nicholas Lyon wandered into the rose garden, desperate to calm himself, to restore his shattered nerves and dispel the fears that seemed to have taken control of his mind. A momentous change had occurred and it had happened against his will. Now, the known had become the unknown; the familiar, unfamiliar; and in this new, unwelcome environment he would have to survive.

‘Tuna fish today-nice chunks of greasy… eh, flesh. How would that suit you, Quill?’

Miss Spinnell opened the cupboard above the sink and scrabbled blindly inside, delving for the chosen tin. Two forefingers landed in a pool of oil and she withdrew them quickly, smelling them before reaching back inside and extracting the opened can.

‘They’ve done it again,’ she muttered to herself, ‘drinking the very milk from my cartons, and now the very… dog flesh… from my, eh… eh… tinister… boxes.’

Quill’s dish was soon full of a strange assortment of ingredients from the store cupboard, but he gobbled it down greedily before lapping up the bowl of Ribena that had been thoughtfully laid out for him.

When Alice arrived and knocked on the old woman’s door she was surprised by the silence that greeted her before Miss Spinnell’s thin voice could be heard. Where were the usual clanks, clicks and rattles that always heralded the relaxing of her domestic security, appropriate for a nuclear reactor, protecting her Broughton Place flat? The door did not open its usual ten inches, a single chain remaining, for inspection of all visitors.