Michael Dibdin - The Tryst

‘Very good!’ Matthews nodded. ‘But I wonder if you’re clever enough to guess what I thought when I heard all this, hundreds of miles away in a foreign land, on the eve of the great battle that was to be my baptism of fire? First of all, though, let me tell you exactly what it was that I heard. When Maurice’s body was discovered, the police were informed and a doctor fetched to examine the corpse. He reported that death had occurred about two years before, as the result of a fall. The police immediately rounded up the forest dwellers I told you about earlier, and sure enough, they admitted burying Maurice’s body. They said they had come upon it by chance one morning, and knowing that they would be turned out and made homeless a second time if it should be found there, they had dragged the body into the wood and concealed it where it might have remained undiscovered for ever if the trees had not been felled and the ground ploughed up once the war came. This much they confessed, but nothing would make them admit to the murder itself, and since there was no further evidence against them, the case remained a mystery. For my part, I was thinking of what the surgeon had said about the time of Maurice’s death. It had been almost exactly two years earlier that I had watched Maurice leave the Hall one night in pursuit of a female will-o’-the-wisp. Now, there had been two sets of tracks leading away from the Hall, remember. My idea at the time had been that Maurice had gone out and then returned, but supposing he hadn’t, what then?’

Steve raised his eyes to the old man’s face.

‘Someone followed him.’

‘Good. But who?’

‘His brother.’

The old man gaped.

‘How … how did you know?’

Steve shrugged. The videos that the stotters hired often had a story of this kind as a pretext for the scenes of mayhem and carnage, and having seen a lot of them by now Steve had got quite sharp at spotting the clues.

‘You said the footprints split up,’ he explained. ‘One lot came from the front door and the other …’

‘From the east wing, yes. And that should have told me that they couldn’t have been made by Maurice returning to the house, because all the doors save the one he’d come out of would have been bolted on the inside.’

‘And his brother slept there, didn’t he? And he hated him and everything.’

The old man nodded curtly. He seemed rather put out at having his thunder stolen.

‘Quite so. But the question was, what was I to do? I thought of telling one of the officers, but how could I explain it all to a stranger, who didn’t know the place or the people? Then I had what seemed at the time like a stroke of luck. As I said, fresh troops were constantly arriving in preparation for the attack, and one day as I was returning from fatigue duty I happened to see Maurice’s friend Aubrey Deville in a lieutenant’s uniform. Taking my courage in both hands, I approached him and explained the situation. It seemed a great presumption for a lad of my age, a housekeeper’s son and a raw recruit, to presume to interfere in such matters. I didn’t blab out my suspicions of Rupert, of course. I merely told him what I had seen that night, saying that since the discovery of Maurice’s body I felt I could no longer keep silent. At first Deville listened with a condescending sort of smile, but as I spoke this slowly faded and his eyes began to probe away at me like a surgeon searching a wound. When I’d done, he stood there as silent as a statue for what seemed like an eternity. Then he nodded curtly and told me to report that afternoon to an old farm behind the lines that served as a junior officers’ mess for that sector. The afternoon was a quiet time for us, when we tried to get some sleep, for we were up all night on fatigues, digging huge pits. But orders were orders, so rather regretting my rashness already I duly went to the farm, where I found Deville and a group of other officers sitting around on old ammunition boxes. My heart almost failed me when I recognized Rupert Jeffries among them. But military discipline has the great advantage that no one expects you to act naturally. I marched forward and came stiffly to attention with no more expression than a pillar-box. Aubrey Deville told me to stand at ease. “Now I want you to tell us all what you told me this morning,” he says. So I did. When I had finished, Deville turned to the others and said, “You have heard this lad’s evidence. I can vouch that it is true. But I can do no more than that. I can tell you what happened afterwards, and I can reveal how Maurice came by his death.”

‘Naturally this caused quite a stir. “When Maurice told me that he had seen this woman,” Deville went on, “my first thoughts were of grave disquiet for my friend’s health. All of you here knew him to some extent, but few perhaps appreciated the extent to which the catastrophe which has now overwhelmed us preyed upon his mind in those months. Maurice was increasingly distressed by the prospect of a war which he considered would plunge society into a new Dark Age, so much the more terrible than the first as our capacity for organized inhumanity is greater. In those final months of seclusion in the country, this idea had come to preoccupy him to an extent which alarmed even those of us who shared his concern. Thus when he told me about this woman who had supposedly come wandering across his lawn at midnight dressed in a shift, I feared the worst. If I agreed to sit up and watch with him, it was not in any hope that any woman would actually appear, but merely from a desire to verify my fears with a view to urging Maurice to consult a specialist in nervous diseases. But although the spirit was willing enough, the flesh proved too weak, and after waiting in vain for many weary hours, spent listening to Maurice’s increasingly incoherent eulogies of this woman he claimed to have loved all his life, despite telling me he had seen her for the first time a few weeks before, I retired to get some sleep, having begged my friend to do likewise. Scarcely had I reached my room, however, than I heard Maurice’s voice calling out, “Who are you? Where are you going?” The room I had been allocated was in the east wing, so I could see his window from mine, and when I looked out I beheld him gesturing frantically towards the lawn. As young Matthews here has testified, there was absolutely nothing to be seen. Maurice had already told me that he intended to follow the woman if she should appear again, so when he abruptly vanished from the window I knew what to expect. I felt that he should not be allowed to roam about all alone in the middle of the night, brainsick as I now knew him to be. Quickly drawing on again the boots I had just that moment put off, I hastened downstairs and let myself out of a side door.

‘ “Despite my haste, Maurice was already out of sight when I left the Hall, but the line of footprints marked in the dew on the lawn showed me the way he had gone. I followed it to the gravel path which leads from the other wing past the church to the west gate of the park. It was a fine night and I had no difficulty in finding my way. However, when I came to the gate I was at a loss. I knew that Maurice could not have gone out towards the village without rousing the gatekeeper, of whom there was no sign, but he might either have turned right towards the stables or left along the old track leading up into the woods. Then, looking in the latter direction, I seemed to see a flurry of movement about half-way up the hillside. The next moment it was gone, swallowed up in the darkness of the trees, but I immediately started running that way as fast as I could. The track was straight and steep, treacherous and uneven, the mere memory of a road. At that hour, by that light, it looked inconceivably ancient, as indeed it may well have been. The woods seemed to lower above me like a bank of fog. Once I entered their vast penumbra I could see only fitfully, by snatches. Gradually the track levelled out, and I knew that I must have reached the crest of the hill. The night was perfectly calm and still except for the sounds of my own progress and the small noises of creatures going about their business, killing and being killed. I could see almost nothing but the parting of the trees against the hazy sky, which showed me my way. At length this strip of sky broadened out as the trees on either side fell back. I thought at first that I had reached the other side of the wood, but then I saw that it was only a clearing, although a large one. In it stood a house, separated from the track by a garden with a low wall. The garden looked as wild and overgrown as the underwood itself, but the house was surprisingly handsome and large, much too imposing for a woodsman’s dwelling. It may have been a hunting lodge dating from the time when those woods were a royal demesne. However that may have been, it was now quite clearly untenanted and in a state of abandonment. I was about to pass on when a jarring noise startled me. After the gentle forest murmurs I had grown used to, it sounded as loud as a shot, but I soon saw that it had been made by someone opening a window high up in one of the gables of the house. The next moment Maurice appeared at the window, smiling and waving. Overcome with relief, I hailed him. He took not the slightest notice of me, however, but continued gesturing and smiling as before. My relief rapidly turned to alarm as I realized that these demonstrations were not intended for me. ‘Yes, yes!’ he cried loudly. Then, to my utter horror, I beheld my friend step out and stand on the ledge. I shouted at him repeatedly, endeavouring to awaken him from his fatal delirium, but he was no more aware of me than a lover alone with his mistress is aware of the barking of a distant dog. His face was pale, rapt and ecstatic in the moonlight, even at the moment when he stepped forward off the ledge. A moment later I heard the terrible impact, like a sack hitting the ground. I rushed forward and found my friend lying on the stones of the yard. His face was uninjured, and on his lips the blissful smile I had seen before was just beginning to fade. A moment later it had gone, and his features started to set in the calm mask of death. But I had no doubt then and I have no doubt now that Maurice Jeffries died a happy man.