Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“You’re taking this pretty cool,” he said. “I mean me just walking in.”

“It’s interesting to meet one of my husband’s London friends,” she said. The absence of emotional colouring made the words seem to hang there, waiting for him to decide how to take them.

He lost patience.

“’My husband’s London friends,’ ” he jeered. “I suppose you think you know what I’m talking about.”

“Yes,” she said.

He took a couple of paces forward and stared down at her, leaning his knuckles on the table. She looked up at him, unafraid. There was nothing more he could do to her now.

“Bugger me!” he said quietly. “I don’t get it. There was a fat old cow across the road when I was a kid. Been a housemaid or something in big houses, back before the first war, she had, full of stories about life among the nobs, Lord this having it off nine ways with Lady that, and her husband not giving a fuck because he was going with a lot of stable lads. ‘Don’t you take no notice of her,’ my ma told me. ‘It’s only stories.’”

“Do you want anything to eat?” said Rachel.

He took a look at the tray, sniffed the cheese and made a face.

“There’s some ham in the kitchen,” said Rachel. “I could make you a ham sandwich.”

“What about the servants? He said there’d be servants.”

“It’s their evening out. They won’t be back until ten.”

“All right. Got any pickles?”

“I expect so.”

All that Rachel could recover from the time in the kitchen was an image of the cooking knives in the jar beside the salt-pot and the scales, and the thought drifting through her strangely will-less mind, Perhaps I could kill him with one of those.

Then they were back in the study, under the ugly, dull illumination of the overhead light. She was at her table again, and he half perched on the edge of Jocelyn’s desk, munching. On the plate beside him were the discarded crusts of his sandwiches and a yellow smear of pickle sauce. A fresh cigarette lay on the ashtray, smoke curling up from its tip. He must have helped himself to more Marsala, neat—the glass was half full and the liquid unclouded. He was looking at Jocelyn’s lighter, with his initials on it, a thank-you present from Flora and Jack after their wedding.

“Nice,” he said. “He’d like me to have that, wouldn’t he? Something to remember him by.”

“If you like,” she said, indifferent.

His eyes widened. Perhaps he had been expecting at least a token resistance. He smiled and dropped the lighter into his coat pocket. His confidence was returning. No doubt the Marsala helped. Rachel wondered whether he would become drunk enough to attack her, and if that would be enough to rouse her from her apathy. Part of her seemed to stand outside herself and consider the question. Probably not, she concluded. She watched him rise, walk round the desk, and sit in Jocelyn’s chair. The stimulus of pure anger returned, but there was no eruption. He tried the drawers and found the centre and top left ones locked.

“Where’s the key, then?”

“On my husband’s key ring.”

He nodded, apparently assured that she was too tamed to lie to him, and tried the others. The ones he could open contained little to interest him—writing paper, envelopes, stamps, account books—but from the lowest on the right he pulled out a flat hinged box, opened it, and frowned.

“What’s this, then?”

“The ammunition for my husband’s antique pistols.”

“Pistols, now. Where?”

“On the lower shelf of the table beside you.”

He reached down, lifted out the rosewood box, laid it on the desk and opened it.

“Hey! Now that’s something!” he said.

He picked out one of the pistols and aimed it at her, grinning. She saw that he was younger than she’d thought. He was a boy, playing with a toy gun.

He switched his aim to other targets, the fire, the portraits of Jocelyn’s parents, the fox’s mask beside the window. When he pulled the trigger there was no answering click, as the gun wasn’t cocked. He put it back in the box and took out the other one, turning it to and fro to study the details. The neat movement of his fingers demonstrated his respect and admiration for the object, something like Rachel herself felt for her favourite cameras.

“Got his initials on them, too,” he said. “Only they got to be older than that. His dad’s, were they?”

“No. They belonged to a man called Joachim Murat. He was one of Napoleon’s generals. The pistols are about a hundred and fifty years old.”

“You don’t say!”

No mockery now. He seemed genuinely impressed. Rachel could imagine a young man of her own class—one of Dick’s friends, say—reacting less appropriately. He looked up, and his manner reverted.

“Now that’s something Joss’d really want me to have,” he suggested. “To remember him by, you know? Seeing I’ve been a good friend to him.”

Anger found leverage at last. Her will woke and controlled it, letting her answer in the same dead tone.

“I don’t know.”

He picked up the other pistol and fought an imaginary skirmish, two-handed, gunning down half a dozen outlaws in rapid succession.

“You’d need to reload between shots,” said Rachel.

“Yeah,” he said absently, whirling to take a snap shot at the half-caste creeping up behind him.

“Shall I show you how?” said Rachel.

“Oh. Right you are. No, you stay where you are, lady.”

He came round the desk with the box and handed her one of the pistols. She picked one of the slugs out of its nest, then put it back.

“We’d better not use these,” she said. “They’re the original ones, and the paper on the cartridges is very fragile. Will you bring me the other box? Thank you. If you just watch what I do, and copy me, so you know how. You’ve got the right-hand gun, by the way—it’s a little bit heavier. Now you need a slug, and a cartridge and a cap.”

She picked out of their compartments two of the elongated lead pellets, about three eighths of an inch in diameter and twice that long, with one end rounded and the other flat; two of the cartridges, tubes of thick waxed paper pinched shut at one end and with a brass base at the other; and from individual slots in the third compartment two caps, squat copper cones with a nipple at the point.

“First you fit the cap into this pit at the bottom of the cartridge. It goes in pointed end first, like this. That’s right. Put it down carefully. They can go off at the slightest tap. Now, you have your own loading rod and mallet. Here. You move this catch up—it’s on a spring and fairly stiff—and break the gun open. That’s right. Hold the barrel in your left hand, pointing downwards. Now drop the slug in, pointed end first. Look and check that it’s sitting centrally. Put the loading rod into the breech, this end first—you’ll find it just fits—and give it a tap with the mallet. Again—I don’t think that was quite hard enough. That’s to seat the slug into the rifling. Now drop the cartridge in on top of it, this way round, and push it down with your thumb until you can feel it’s flush with the rim of the breech. Let me see. Yes, that’s right. Now close the breech—do it firmly, so that the catch clicks. No, take your finger off the trigger. Lay it along the trigger guard, like this. Now with your left hand—you can do it with your thumb, but it’s safer to use both hands—cock the gun. That’s this lever here. Check that it’s all the way back …”

While he lowered his glance to make the unnecessary inspection she aimed her own gun at his chest and fired.

* * *

Another gap, but of a different nature, because even at the time there had been no memory to fill it. Nothing between the jar of the explosion and her becoming aware of herself sitting in the dark of the hall, shuddering as if with extreme cold. She rose, felt her way to the cupboard and fetched out coats, choosing them by touch, her own camel-hair, which she put on, and Jocelyn’s big raglan, which she heaped over herself when she huddled back into the armchair. The movements had been awkward because all the while she had been clutching a hard object in her left hand—the key to the study. That told her why she was here. She was waiting for the lights of the Triumph to sweep across the windows as it took the bend of the drive when the Ransons came home. She would then go down to the back yard and tell them to leave the car out for her to take to the station to meet the Colonel.