Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“All right. Let me think.”

She waited for at least ten minutes while he concentrated, sipping his drink. At last he nodded and put his glass down.

“All right. I think that’s the best we can do,” he said. “First, I’ve got to ask you this. Are you really sure about what you said just now—I mean that you want to stick with me—in spite of what I am? I don’t think I can change that. I would like to, for both our sakes, but I don’t believe it’s possible.”

“I thought about it while I was waiting for you. Yes. I’m quite sure.”

“There’s not enough I can say, so I won’t try. If you want to, we’ll talk about it later. And if you want me to go and see psychiatrists and so on.”

“Like spinach.”

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘Filthy stuff, but I’ll get it down somehow,’ ” she quoted. “You healed yourself after Cambi Road, darling. I think that for my sake you would heal yourself from this if you could, and if you can’t then I don’t believe anyone else can help you.”

“Well, we’ll think about it later. What I want you to do now is to go to bed. Do everything you would on any other evening but don’t go to sleep. I’ll be up in about three quarters of an hour.”

“There’s nothing I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so.”

He rose, picking up the decanter and siphon.

“Oh, put these glasses in the kitchen on your way up, as if you’d taken them in from the study.”

“What about his? It’ll have his fingerprints on it, won’t it?”

“Everything’s going to have to be wiped down. I’ve just got to get the timing right. Off you go, now.”

She did as she was told, taking as long as possible about everything. There was no hope of any book holding her mind, but she opened the Angela Thirkell she’d been reading and sat in bed, her eyes scanning the lines, her hands turning the pages, but not a word going in. She refused to look at the clock.

Eventually Jocelyn appeared, came round the bed to kiss her, and started to undress, talking quietly as he did so.

“All right. In a few minutes we’re going to smell burning. I’m going down to investigate. I’ll yell for you. You put on your dressing-gown and slippers and come down. I’ll tell you to go and fetch Ranson and tell him there’s a fire in the study, and then to call the fire brigade. You’re up to that?”

“I think so.”

She watched him go rapidly through his full bedtime ritual, glancing every now and then at his wristwatch. He climbed into bed beside her, put on his reading glasses and picked up his book. He actually seemed to read a page before he said, “That should about do it. We don’t want to burn the house down.”

Without apparent hurry he got up, stepped into his slippers, picked up his dressing-gown and left, putting it on as he went. With the door open, Rachel caught the whiff of burning.

She did what she would naturally have done in such a case, getting up and following him as far as the top of the stairs. She could hear his footsteps racing down the short flights. His shout rose.

“Ray! Ray! Quick!”

She kicked off her stupid slippers and ran. He was outside the study, with a soaked tea-towel covering his face. He had one of the red extinguishers in his hand. Smoke was pluming out under the door.

“Wake Ranson,” he said. “Tell him to cover his face with a wet cloth, get an extinguisher and come here. Then call the fire brigade.”

She met Ranson hurrying down the back stairs in his night clothes. She told him what to do, ran and called the brigade from the hall, and then fetched the extinguisher from the gun room at the end of the north corridor and ran with it to the study. Ranson was crouched at the doorway, masked like Jocelyn, directing the jet from his extinguisher into the room. Clouds of smoke and steam streamed out over his head. Crouching beneath them she reached the door.

“Here’s a spare,” she said. “Where’s the Colonel?”

“Over by the window. I think we’re winning. This muck is mostly steam. Looks like a spark must’ve somehow got into the wastepaper basket.”

“Out of the way,” called Jocelyn—loud, but not a shout—a command.

A moment later he came crouching through the door, choking and gasping.

“Mine’s empty. I’ll … Ah, you’ve got it—good for you. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Try not to get it on my Christmas cards!”

The mess was merely smouldering by the time the firemen came tramping in to inspect the embers and splash a bit more water around. The patch of carpet where the body had lain was burned right through. The whole room was smeared with smoke, and reeked appallingly. The front of Rachel’s worktable was scorched, the envelopes, cards and remaining photographs discoloured. The stack she had completed was gone. Dully she opened the low cupboard behind her chair to inspect her cameras. Several, all her best ones, were not in their places.

She found the cards out on the post table in the hall, where she would naturally have left them. Was it conceivable that she had actually put them there, in that first long blank period after she had fired the shot? The cameras were in her darkroom. True, she might sometimes leave one, or possibly two there, but not five. Jocelyn must have done that. But at no point, except for once next morning, did he say anything to suggest that the fire had been other than an accident, or that the young man had been there at all.

She knew that if she had wanted to talk about what had become of him he would have done his best to comply, but she didn’t want—indeed, if he had offered she would have declined. That world was gone. She must learn to live contentedly in this diminished one.

The following morning, then.

Mrs. Ranson brought their tray up as if nothing special had happened. They agreed with her verdict that it was a mercy Rachel had smelt the fire so that the men could get to it in time. Rachel sat up in bed sipping her tea, while Jocelyn stalked half dressed round the room, as he did every morning, fiddling with objects and adjusting them to the precise positions he preferred.

“I’m going to have to go to London,” he said suddenly. “It’ll take me about three days. I don’t want you here alone.”

“I can’t come with you?”

“Afraid not. No. You’d better go to Jack and Flora if they can have you.”

“What shall we tell them?”

“That you’re upset about the fire, and you want to be out of the way while the worst of the mess is cleaned up.”

“No. That’s not me. I’d stay and cope.”

“I suppose so.”

He rattled a breath out between fluttered lips.

“Right,” he said. “It’s not just the fire. The reason I have to go back to London is that we’ve been very badly let down by Fish Stadding. There should have been about thirty-six thousand pounds in the Association funds. It looks as if there’s only a few hundred.”

“Fish! Is that true? Are you sure?”

“Yes. It looks as if he’s been playing fast and loose with some of his clients’ money—people I’d put him on to in the first place. Gerry St. Looe was beginning to ask questions. Fish needed to come up with the money fast, so he took what he could get at. We were bound to find out in a month or so, but it was a breathing space—only it wasn’t.”

“But Leila’s rolling!”

“Was rolling, at a guess. He’ll have gone through all that.”

“Oh, God! Fish! What about Leila? And Anne and Simon …? Oh, Jocelyn!”

“This only came up yesterday. That’s why I had to hang on in London, to see what Fish had to say about it. The answer wasn’t very satisfactory.”

“What on earth can I say to Leila? Does she even know yet?”