Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“Of course I asked Sim about it, soon as we were in the car to come home—it was a terrible drive those days, before the motor-ways—and all he said was, ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I would if I could, but I can’t. It’s something she’s done in the last few months, they weren’t like that last time I came. And please don’t ask me again.’ I could tell from the way he said it he was very upset.

“Of course I guessed it was something he’d promised his mother, not to talk about the Matsons, though it didn’t stop him going over to Forde Place for the Cambi Road reunions.

“Anyway he’d been in love with this girl, Anne her name was, and they were going to get married. I found some of the wedding invitations at the back of a drawer once, so they’d got that far, and it would have been a big, smart wedding, but their two stupid fathers had this row and it was all broken off. I don’t know what it was about. One of us three wives said Sim’s father had run off with a woman Colonel Matson had introduced him to, but the other one said no, it was because he’d stolen a lot of money belonging to Colonel Matson, and Colonel Matson had come and told Sim that he didn’t want him for his son-in-law any longer. Sim absolutely worshipped Colonel Matson, I should have told you, so I thought that made a bit better sense than the other story, but it still wasn’t like my Sim, not if he loved the girl the way I’m sure he did. You can see about cancelling the fancy wedding, I suppose, but what was to stop them waiting a little while and them marrying each other quietly, and bother their parents if they were against it, they were both old enough? And anyway, he was honour bound to marry her, wasn’t he, like he was honour bound to the Cambi Road Association, and he wouldn’t give it up, whatever I said.

“His father used to be secretary, you see, and Colonel Matson was the boss. And then his father ran off, and somebody else took over, but he got ill and Colonel Matson died, so they were in trouble until Sim went to them and said he’d do the job. I don’t know how he put it to them, I expect they were a bit surprised but of course they jumped at the chance. Only whatever he said his real reason was he knew he’d made a terrible mistake and he wanted to keep in touch with the Matsons, just hoping he might pick up with the girl again. I expect he’d written to her before, and she hadn’t answered or she’d given him the brush-off, but he wasn’t going to give up. He’s like that.

“Of course that was all before I met him—”

An electric bell rang briefly, twice, from the hall.

“That’ll be for you,” said Mrs. Stadding, rising. “And thank you for listening to a stupid old woman worrying away at what can’t be helped.”

“You mustn’t think that bad of yourself,” said Dilys. “You’re being brave about it, you really are. I’ve seen some make far more fuss when they hadn’t got half what you’ve got to put up with.”

“Only it’s so hard to keep going.”

“Of course it is.”

“And I’ll tell you what’s the worst of it—it’s thinking he should never have let any of it happen in the first place, and he knows it and I know it. Oh, why couldn’t he tell those stupid old men that their silly quarrel wasn’t any of his business, and just gone ahead and married the girl, if he was that fond of her?”

As she started to weep the bell rang again, longer and more insistently. Mr. Stadding could hear their voices, Dilys guessed. She took Mrs. Stadding by the shoulders and eased her back into her chair.

“Now, you sit there and drink your tea,” she said. “I haven’t finished mine so I’ll be back in a minute for the rest of it, and we can talk some more if you want.”

She left her dutifully sipping as she wept.

Mr. Stadding was sitting with his head bowed and his eyes shut. The recorder was in his lap with the case closed and the microphone unplugged and coiled. After a few seconds he looked up, slowly, as if just raising his eyelids was almost too taxing.

“I trust you have had a pleasant gossip,” he said. “Well, I have recorded an answer of a sort for Mrs. Matson. I hope it will satisfy her. Will you make her understand that I have done even this with considerable reluctance, and shall not respond to any further enquiries. I suppose I must thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

Dilys tucked the recorder and microphone into her bag. She was all too used to the way the old and ill can exploit their weakness to control others. She spoke to Mr. Stadding as if he had been one of her patients, not letting her anger show, using a quiet, professional tone, as if she’d been advising him on the management of his illness.

“I’ve got something to say to you before I go, Mr. Stadding. You’ll think it’s no business of mine, but I’ve been talking to your wife, like you said to. She’s having a very rough time, poor thing…No, you listen to me, and of course you’re wishing it wasn’t so but there’s nothing you can do about it. Well there is. She’s got ideas into her head about the whys and wherefores of stuff that’s happened—this stuff I came to see you about, not that I know much about it myself, but I know enough to see that some of her imaginings are mistaken. No, wait. Far as I can gather, you’ve never told her, not because you didn’t want to, but because you gave someone your word about it, once. Well, that’s all over. It’s years and years ago. Colonel Matson’s dead and Mrs. Matson won’t be long going and there isn’t anyone else that matters, except Mrs. Stadding. You think it’s not got anything to do with her, but it has. More than anyone else it has, now. You don’t want to leave her thinking worse of you than she need do, do you? So you go ahead and tell her everything you can. You’re a decent man, and you’ve been trying to do the decent thing all these years to a lot of people who don’t matter any more. It’s her turn now. She’s the one who matters. Don’t leave it lying between you the way it is now, and you’ll both feel better for it, really you will.”

His answer was toneless with weariness.

“As you say, it is none of your business, Miss Roberts. Nevertheless I will think about it.”

“You do that. And show her the photograph Mrs. Matson took of you, and talk to her about Miss Anne. It won’t upset her, nothing like the way she’s upset now.”

“Goodbye, Miss Roberts.”

Mrs. Stadding was still in the kitchen, but she had finished her tea and cleaned away the traces of her tears.

“I made you another cup,” she said. “Yours looked cold and horrid.”

The bell rang, a single, longer burst.

“That’s for me to go and give him a hand with…you know. He can’t manage on his own any more. I’m afraid it takes a while, but please stay as long as you want and let yourself out if you’ve got to go.”

“I’ll just have my tea and then I’ll be off, thank you. I told the driver half an hour, and it’s past that already.”

“In that case…well, goodbye, Miss Roberts.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Stadding. And I do hope things go better for you soon.”

“Oh, dear.”

RACHEL

1

A voice that has no moisture and no breath

Breathless months may summon.

Rachel couldn’t remember how she knew the lines, or where they came from, but they sidled often into her mind these days as she struggled with her increasingly erratic command of speech. Today was in fact one of her better days, when she seemed able to put several words together at times and without huge effort. Dilys had returned late yesterday afternoon with the tape, and she had listened twice to the brief message, and had then lain and thought, eaten her supper, watched TV, slept well, and woken full of the excitement of her planned day. It was the excitement, the urgency to get the thing finished at last, that supplied the energies needed for speech.