Джеймс Хилтон: And Now Good-bye

“I’ve more to tell you yet,” Freemantle went on, deliberately. “After the concert we spent an hour or so at an hotel, and then, as it was getting late, I took her to the place where she was staying. It was a studio over a garage in Kensington—it belonged to some friends of hers. When we got there she asked me to come up and meet them, but we found the place empty. They’d left a note to say they’d been called away suddenly for the week-end.”

“I see. So there you were, pleasantly parked with this girl in an untenanted studio?”

Freemantle took no notice. “She made some coffee and we sat and talked by the fire. I stayed on—talking—and—in the end—I didn’t go back to my hotel at all.”

“Didn’t you, by Jove? Bit imprudent, eh? Supposing the studio people had come back unexpectedly?”

“I don’t think we either of us thought about that. We were too absorbed thinking of other things. We—we discovered that—that we were both rather—rather desperately fond of each other.”

Ringwood flushed slightly, not exactly from embarrassment, but because he felt he was going to be made a reluctant confidant in a matter which, for some reason, he would not be able to treat in any of his usual ways. Scores of times in that surgery men had confessed, as a rule shamefacedly, to some kind of amorous adventure, and scores of times he had kicked his heels against the desk and shouted at them, blusteringly: “Well, don’t look so solemn about it—it’s not the first time such a thing’s been done in the history of the world, you know!” But with Freemantle an instinct warned him that his customary banter would not be appropriate; in his case there might be, after all, a certain seriousness. Ringwood, in fact, was just a little astonished; he hadn’t really suspected Freemantle of being that sort of chap. Not that he thought any less of him for it; as a man; heavens, no—but really, you did somehow expect parsons to behave themselves a bit more than other people. Rather like the Wakeford case, in a way…

He said, after another gulp of whisky: “Look here, old man, I really don’t see the point in your telling me all this. I’m not a father-confessor or a censor of morals or anything like that, but I do suggest, as a man of the world, that all that sort of thing is better not chattered about. Know what I mean, eh? Lots of things we all do that we shouldn’t—naturally—but what I do feel is, Why tell people—why tell anybody?”

But you don’t understand what I am telling you, Ringwood! There wasn’t anything anything like that! We just talked—and talked—there was nothing—of the kind of thing you’re suggesting—nothing at all—”

“All right, old chap, all right. Sorry if I dropped a brick.” (He thought: Poor devil, does he really think anyone would believe that? And Ringwood reflected curiously upon the morbid mentality that would embark upon a totally unnecessary confession and then furiously deny the only thing that gave the confession any point at all.) He went on, almost gently: “My dear Freemantle, I still say—Why bother about it? Whether you did or didn’t do this or that, what the hell’s the use of arguing about it now? It’s over and done with for better or worse—why can’t you forget it with all the rest?”

But Freemantle still went on, and still with the same slow and inexorable emphasis: “I was telling you, wasn’t I, that she and I had discovered that—that we—meant everything to each other. So—so we talked things over—and decided—in the end—to go and live in Vienna together.”

“ What? What’s that?”

“Just as I said. And the next morning we—she and I—were going to Kettering, because I knew somebody there who would sign my passport papers—that was necessary, you know, before I could get away. We were having breakfast together on the train, and she’d just gone along to the compartment while I stayed behind a moment to settle the bill—I didn’t even have time to do that—I never paid it, as a matter of fact—because the other thing happened so quickly…Now— now do you understand?”

Ringwood’s heels banged against the desk. “What? I don’t quite follow—what’s that you’re saying?”

“It happened—then—you see—while she was away—and I was staying behind…Don’t you understand?”

“Good God, man, I’ve heard all you’ve said, but—but I can’t grasp it—surely you don’t mean—”

“Yes, yes, I do mean it. It’s—it’s a rather queer and awful thing to have happened, isn’t it? But it’s the truth.”

“The truth!”

“Yes. The truth that the newspapers never guessed.”

“You mean—that she—this girl you were travelling with—was killed? ”

Freemantle answered quietly, but with his voice deep with horror: “She must have just reached the first coach when—it happened. I saw her there—amongst it all. I tried to get her out. I couldn’t. She was burned to death. I saw her …”

His eyes took on a vivid glare, and Ringwood, even in the midst of his amazement, sprang to instinctive professional awareness. “Come, come,” he said, putting down his glass and walking over to Freemantle. “None of that, now. No good, you know.” He put a hand on the parson’s swaying shoulders, and Freemantle seemed to derive strength from the contact. After a while he looked up with more tranquil eyes and said, with a sharp sigh: “Well, there it is. I’ve told you now. I’m glad somebody knows at last.”

“My dear chap, yes…” Ringwood went to a cupboard and drew out his emergency bottle of brandy, but Freemantle waved it aside; he was all right, he said, now that he had told what he wanted to tell. He added, plaintively: “I’m sorry, Ringwood, for wasting your time all the other evenings of this week.”

“Oh, that’s all right…”

“I must have been a terrible nuisance.”

“Oh, nonsense…”

“Well…you can understand…now…”

“I’m trying to, anyway. But—but it’s—it’s all so damned extraordinary I don’t know what to think. It’s just about taken the wind out of my sails. D’you mean—I suppose you do—that nobody’s got the slightest inkling of what’s really happened?”

“Not the slightest, Ringwood. All the passport things were left in the compartment and were burned. Nobody who knew either of us had seen us on the train, and it happened to be a Manchester train that I might very well have been travelling on in any case. I was even using up the return half of my Manchester ticket. And she—she was wearing no jewellery—nothing that gave any clue—afterwards. Even her parents aren’t curious—they’ve quite made up their minds that she’s gone to the bad, and they neither expect nor wish to see her again.”

“It’s all most amazing. The most amazing thing I ever heard of in my life.” A faint thought struck him and he added: “I suppose you’ve not been dreaming all this by any chance, have you, Freemantle?”

“Hardly.”

Ringwood flung himself down in his swivel-chair and for a few seconds scribbled idly on his blotting pad, trying to absorb the intricacies of a situation to which all his years of experience could provide nothing approaching a parallel. He was not a very imaginative person, and he found himself more and more befogged as he pondered over it all. The only theory which to him, as a medical man, seemed to fit the case was that Freemantle might be completely off his head, and have invented the whole story with the fervid ingenuity of the mentally deranged. At last, throwing down his pencil, he exclaimed: “Well, if you say it all happened I’ll have to believe it did, that’s all. But what I chiefly can’t fathom is this Vienna business. You say you had definitely made plans to go out there with this girl?”