Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

She sighed and went to the kitchen. Thursday was the Ransons’ afternoon off. Normally Mrs. Ranson would have set out the makings of a meal, simple enough for Rachel to cope with, before she and her husband went to the bowling club. Rachel told her not to bother. She’d have cheese and biscuits and tomatoes at her table while she finished the Christmas cards. Her afternoon was planned, and that would fill the empty evening.

Those plans for the afternoon. She could remember their existence, but not what they’d been. Had she driven somewhere? Yes, she must have. The trip itself was irrecoverable, but she could remember her sense of utter loneliness as she’d let herself into the house at dusk and locked the door behind her.

The evening, then. About a quarter to seven—the time not memory but reconstruction, since the train—the one Jocelyn should have been on—got in at six-eighteen. The study. Curtains closed and a coal fire starting to glow, not for herself, but so that Jocelyn should have his own warm lair to come home to, where he could sip his scotch and tell her about his day. A pool of light from his desk lamp, for imaginary company: dark, and he was not in the house; lit, and he could just have gone out of the room. Her supper tray at the other end of the desk, so that she wouldn’t need to face the ambient emptiness till he returned.

Her own worktable sharp-lit, cleared for her task and then systematically set out: three stacks of blank cards of different sizes; their envelopes; a dozen piles of photographs to be selected and pasted in; her card lists for the past three years; two address books, hers and Jocelyn’s; paste; pen; blotter; stamps. Apart from desk and table the room in deep shadow.

The night silent. Neither she nor Jocelyn listened to music, and used the wireless solely for the early morning news. When the Ransons were in you might catch the mutter of their television. The house itself stood rock solid. After ninety years not a floorboard creaked, every door clicked quietly home, and it took a full gale to rattle a window. So the gentle flap of a flame over the coals was enough to mask the opening of the door, which she’d left an inch ajar for air. She merely sensed its movement.

Her heart thumped. Dick? Not the Ransons, home early—she’d have heard the car in the yard. Flora or Anne would certainly have called. Dick was supposedly in Australia, but hadn’t been heard from for three months. This would be typical.

She put the paste brush back in its pot and turned. Her heart thumped again. The head that was peeking round the door, though hard to make out with lamp-dazzled eyes, wasn’t Dick’s. Before she could speak the man stepped confidently into the room, closing the door behind him.

“Hello,” she said, now startled but not yet alarmed. “Who are you? This is a private house, I’m afraid.”

Without answering he switched on the overhead light and strolled towards her. A young man—eighteen?—slight, blond, with high cheekbones and sunken cheeks. Pale blue eyes and a full-lipped mouth. He was wearing a short dark overcoat with heavily padded shoulders. This, and something in his bearing and look, though his face bore no marks of old blows, suggested he might be a boxer, or perhaps wish to pass as one.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Just a pal of old Joss,” he said.

For a moment she couldn’t think who he was talking about.

“You mean my husband, Colonel Matson?”

“You’re on,” he said. “Been a good friend to me, Joss has, a very good friend.”

He looked at her half sideways and smiled. She said nothing, only stared. She was aware of her chest heaving, dragging air in, forcing it out unused. Not the words but the look had carried the meaning.

“So when he says to me, ‘Why don’t you just run up to Matlock, tell my good lady I’ll be late home?’ I thought, Why not, seeing it’s old Joss. ‘Here’s a tenner for the ticket and the taxi,’ he says. ‘Tell him Forde Place. And here’s the keys so you don’t bother the servants.’”

The heaving was replaced by nausea. He was lying, of course. Jocelyn had called. He’d have known the Ransons would be out—he didn’t forget that sort of thing. He’d never have sprung something like this on Rachel, or given anyone else his key—he’d even made a fuss about having one cut for Fish Stadding when he’d had a room of his own here…

The young man was watching her, still smiling. She saw that he didn’t expect her to believe him. His confidence lay elsewhere. In the “friendship.”

“Joss didn’t want you worrying, really he didn’t,” he said. “Very thoughtful, Joss is…Fag anywhere? No, you stay put, lady.”

His right hand, which had so far remained casually in the pocket of his coat, moved as if to withdraw something, and stopped. A flick knife? Rachel had read about flick knives.

He lounged over to Jocelyn’s desk, took a cigarette out of the ebony box, and lit it one-handed with Jocelyn’s lighter. He inhaled deeply, confident in his own dominance.

“One for you?” he suggested, teasing.

“I don’t smoke.”

Her voice answered flatly, controlled by some corner of her mind detailed to keep the rest of the system going when the rest was in shock. It wasn’t thinking, that rest. It was refusing to think, refusing to imagine, huddling down with its eyes uselessly shut and its hands uselessly over its ears. She had no ideas, no plan. What she had was a vomit-like upsurge of emotions, disgust, jealousy, hate, rage, bottled up in herself for a dozen frustrated years. She had no doubt that her understanding was far more than a good guess. If anything, she should have at least guessed before. Jocelyn was a sensual man. He lived through his body. Younger, she had not believed that of herself, had thought she lived primarily through her eyes and mind. Without Jocelyn she might never have discovered her other self—only, through his captivity and the years that followed, to have to put that self back to sleep, and learn to live again just through the eye and the mind. But it was still there, sleeping, dreaming, dreaming of wakefulness once more. She had shared many of those dreams. But Jocelyn…People don’t change that much. They don’t. Jocelyn was a sensual man still, living through his body. What had changed was the objects of his sensuality. Changed when? On the Cambi Road.

“Well, aren’t you going to say nothing?”

The corner of her mind did its duty.

“Sorry…I was surprised…I wasn’t expecting…Do you want anything to eat…? A drink…?”

“What you got?”

“The drinks are in the cabinet there.”

He opened it and drew the bottles out one by one for inspection, standing sideways on to keep an eye on her. He sniffed a decanter.

“Scotch,” he said. “Can’t stand it. Rotgut. What’s this one?”

The question steadied her.

“It should have a label round its neck. I think it’s Marsala. Sweet. A bit like port.”

“Port’ll do. What’s this? Lemon. Well, I’m happy.”

He poured a couple of fingers into a schooner, uncapped a bottle of bitter lemon and half filled the glass. He tasted, grimaced, added Marsala and tried again. His hands were small and short-fingered, his movements deft.

“That’s something like,” he said. “What’s yours, then?”

“Scotch,” she said. “Not much. Neat.”

“I’m surprised at you,” he said mockingly, but poured the drink and set it in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said, still speaking like an automaton. Jealousy, disgust and fury screamed inside her, but she isolated and contained them. More of both mind and body came under control. She was aware of a change in him, a loss of confidence. He had expected something different.