Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

There was a taste of cheese in her mouth. She could remember everything that had happened up to the moment she had fired the shot. Her supper tray had remained untouched at the end of the desk, apart from the young man picking up the cheese and sniffing it. She seemed to have no horror of what she had done, but the fact that she must then have felt hungry enough to eat the cheese he had handled struck her as very strange. Strange, but satisfying.

The sequence repeated itself, she didn’t know how many times—the waking, the shuddering cold despite the coats, the key, realisation she was waiting for the Ransons to return, the mouth’s memory of cheese …

Another gap, and then she found herself driving into the station car park and choosing a place well beyond the buildings so that she could be sure of seeing the train come in. She didn’t remember speaking to the Ransons, but in her mind’s ear was a kind of echo of her own voice, sounding brisk and normal. She must also have driven here. Some part of her mind, disconnected, must have seen to all that.

Perhaps not wholly disconnected, because the thought came to her that she dare not wait in the car, as she’d planned, in case she was in one of her blanks when the train arrived. She got out, went into the station, buying a platform ticket from the machine by the gate, and paced up and down the platform, frowning at the clock sometimes as she passed it, but unable to calculate how long it still was until twelve past eleven.

A porter emerged from a door, saw and recognised her.

“London train’s not for another forty minutes, Mrs. Matson.”

“Yes, I know. I misread my watch and came an hour early, so I thought I’d wait.”

“It’s getting parky out here. Be a frost by morning, I shouldn’t wonder. Look, there’s a nice fire in the porters’ room. We’re not supposed to, but it’s only two of us on, and seeing it’s you …”

“I was afraid of falling asleep if I waited in the car. And my husband doesn’t know I’m meeting him.”

“You’ll be all right in our room. There’s a bell goes off like the crack of doom when it passes the signal box.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

The blank this time less absolute. Something like warmth beginning to invade her body, something like coherence attempting to piece her mind together as the forlorn minutes dawdled away. Actual thoughts about her situation. One certainty—that she loved, wanted, needed Jocelyn, and always would. An absurdity—that at least it wasn’t some other woman. A possible way of thinking and feeling about him: Belinda Daring’s cousin the archdeacon, was married to a woman who couldn’t help swearing, wild streams of obscenity, provoked by nothing, in public. Otherwise a pleasant, kind woman, apparently—Rachel hadn’t met her—but with this debilitating tic. There was a name for it, somebody’s syndrome. Her husband, his colleagues, her own friends, the parish, simply ignored it among themselves, but led her out when it happened among strangers … Perhaps Rachel might school herself to do the same, to treat what was happening to Jocelyn as merely an unpleasant and embarrassing ailment, but not despicable or degrading because not his fault, being beyond his power to control … It would be hard, hard almost to the point of despair, an uncovenanted doubling of the price she had paid for having him home, but still, bitterly, worth it.

The bell. The clarity of full recall. She rose and went to wait by the barrier. Blotches of light and dark along the platform. The thud of the big diesel. The train itself invisible, and then a sudden loom in the darkness when it was almost in. Its slowing rumble along the platform. Arms reaching through windows to turn the handles, the doors swinging open, tired men getting down, their feet finding the still moving platform from habit. Others after the train had halted, not many at this late hour. Jocelyn, unmistakable the moment he emerged, signalling for the porter and then turning to help somebody with suitcases. An elderly couple climbing down to join him.

He spoke briefly with them, tipped his hat in farewell and strode towards her, gesturing to the porter as he passed to show where he was needed.

“Hello, I said not to trouble. This is … What’s up?”

“I can’t tell you here.”

He took her by the arm and led her out.

In the darkness by the car she stopped him with a touch, turned him, put her arms round him, laid her head against his shoulder and sobbed. He asked no questions, but hefted his briefcase onto the roof of the car and held her close, smoothing the back of her head with his right hand. She remembered standing like this, in the early days of the war, outside the ward where Anne lay moaning with rheumatic fever, and the crass consultant had offered them nothing but self-important mystifications.

When she was ready she gave him the key of the car. The Triumph was hers, but if they were together it was always he who drove. He still asked nothing, and she sat drawn into herself, unable to think how to tell him. He didn’t drive down to the yard but stopped at the front door, which he opened with the key on his ring. Still she waited until she was forced to speak, having led him by the wrist to the study door and put the key into his hand.

“There’s a man in there,” she said. “I think he’s dead. I shot him with my Ladurie. I don’t know his name, but he said he was a friend of yours. He called you Joss. He had a key to the house.”

Jocelyn took a slow breath and nodded, but made no other move. He must have stood a good minute—more—before he turned, said, “Wait here,” unlocked the door and went in, closing it behind him. He came out, it seemed to Rachel, almost at once, carrying the whisky decanter and a siphon. He handed the siphon to Rachel, relocked the door and led the way to the dining room. There were glasses in the sideboard. He poured two drinks, put them on the table, pulled out a chair and settled her into it, then sat cornerwise across from her. He took her right hand in his left and held it.

“Have a drink,” he said. “Then tell me what happened, if you can.”

She sipped. The bite of the scotch pierced her numbness.

“I was doing the Christmas cards. He just came in. He said you’d asked him to come up and tell me you’d be late home. He said you’d given him a key. I knew he was lying. But he kept saying you were a very good friend of his. He wasn’t lying about that. Jocelyn, I knew what he meant.”

She’d tried to speak in the same automaton voice she’d used with the young man, but it wouldn’t hold true. She found she was crying. She put her other hand over his, and he responded by doing the same.

“I’ve just got this to say,” she sobbed. “It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be … as all right as it can be. Whatever happens, you are still my only darling …”

“And you are mine.”

“I suppose we’d better call the police.”

“No. Go on, if you can.”

“Well, we talked for a bit. I wasn’t frightened. I was furious—much worse than furious—I’ve never felt like that about anyone or anything. But I was sort of numb too. He had one of your cigarettes and a drink—Marsala and bitter lemon. He gave me some scotch. I took him to the kitchen and made him a ham sandwich. We came back to the study. He had another cigarette. He decided to keep the lighter, the one Flora and Jack gave you. He said you’d like him to have it. Then he found the ammunition for the pistols. He didn’t know what it was. I told him about the pistols—he was going to find them anyway. He said you’d like him to have them too. I decided to stop him, I didn’t know how, but he was playing around with them, and that gave me an idea. I said he’d need to know how to load them, and I pretended to show him. I made him copy what I was doing. When I’d got my gun loaded I shot him. I don’t know what happened after that. I must have locked the study door. I waited in the hall till the Ransons came back, because I didn’t want him coming to tell me they were in. Then I came to meet you. I think that’s all.”