John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

'H'm, yes. Do you happen to remember, my boy?'

Dick tried to focus his mind on that scene of rain and confusion and blowing tents, which seemed so long ago as to be part of another age.

'Yes, that's what happened,' he agreed. 'When Sir Harvey collapsed, I stuck my head out of the tent and called to Major Price and Dr Middlesworth.'

'And then?'

'Bill Earnshaw - that's the bank-manager, you know,' Dick explained, with a hazy notion that Lord Ashe lived so remote from village-life as not to recognize this name -'Bill Earnshaw had just come up. Major Price asked Bill to mind the rifles while the major and Dr Middlesworth carried Sir Harvey to the doctor's car. That's all I can tell you.'

' Exactly,' said Lord Ashe.

'Then what's wrong, sir?' 'Major Price, you see, says that nobody abstracted a rifle while he was there. Mr Earnshaw declares that nobody abstracted a rifle while he was there. Yet the rifle is gone.'

Lesley hesitated.' It wasn't the same rifle as I... ?' 'Yes.'

On the third finger of Lord Ashe's left hand was a small seal ring, dullish and unobtrusive. Dick noticed it as the other lifted a hand to his pince-nez. So did Lesley, who seemed to have grown more flustered than ever since their visitor's entrance. Lord Ashe now played his celebrated trick of running down and trailing off like a gramophone.

' Er - I daresay it's of no importance,' he said at length. The needle had caught its groove; the record revolved again. 'But Major Price and Mr Earnshaw were rather heated about it. I believe the major played some stupid joke on Mr Earnshaw at the shooting-range this afternoon, and suspected Mr Earnshaw of trying - as they say - to get level.

'But it's extraordinary. Most extraordinary! Especially when you consider all the rumours that are going about.'

'What rumours?' asked Lesley. She clenched her hands. ' Please tell me! Are they saying things about me ?'

'My dear young lady! Good heavens! No! But I have even heard, for instance, that Sir Harvey Gilman is not seriously hurt. Let us hope so. My grand-uncle Stephen, in the South African War, received a very dangerous bullet-wound and yet survived. He was alive then, of course. That is to say, the incident occurred during his lifetime. My dear boy, I shall not intrude on you any longer. Er - have you transportation, Miss Grant?'

' Transportation ?'

'To go home,' explained Lord Ashe.

'No. I - I walked.'

'Then may I offer you a lift? I have the Ford outside, and Perkins is a careful driver.'

'Thank you, Lord Ashe. I suppose I'd better go.'

Her eyes begged Dick Markham to suggest an excuse for her to stay and talk a little longer. There was almost a hysteria in her manner, silently asking for that word. And he would not give the word.

If she stayed for five minutes longer, he knew, he would blurt out the whole story. Under the sanity and placidness of Lord Ashe's presence, values were shifting and sinking back to normal. For a second he had forgotten, or nearly forgotten, the situation as it existed. Then, with a shock, it was back again. He realized very clearly that he loved

Lesley, and would continue to love her. He was fed up; he couldn't stand any more.

So they left him, and it tore at his heart to watch Lesley's face. They were no sooner outside than he wanted to call out,' Come back! This isn't true 1 Let me tell you about it!'

But the Ford moved away.

His cigarette had gone out. He threw it away into the damp grass of the front garden, standing at the door under the high incurious stars. Then he turned back into the cottage.

He went into the little dining-room, from which he fetched a glass, a syphon, and a bottle of whisky. He took these into the study, and put them down on the typewriter-desk. But his head swam inexplicably. He was tired, dizzily tired, so that it seemed an exertion out of all proportion to remove a metal, bottle-cap or press the handle of a soda-syphon.

So he went over and lay down on his back on the sofa.

'I'll just close my eyes for a moment,' he said. 'The lights being on will keep me awake. Anyway, I don't want to sleep. I'll just close my eyes for a moment. Then I'll get up and pour myself a drink.'

The calm lamplight lay on his eyes. The diamond-paned windows, looking out over the side-garden to the east, had been set open like little doors; their catches rattled to a night-wind that made a frothing of leaves outside. Presently the distant church-clock struck midnight, but he did not hear it.

If anybody had peered in through the window - and it is now certain that, in the thin dwindling hours, a certain face did peer in - this person would have seen a light-haired young man, with a strong jaw but far too much imaginative development in the forehead, lying on a rucked-up sofa in grey flannels and an untidy sports-coat, and muttering white-faced in his sleep.

His dreams were horrible. He does not now remember what they were: perhaps because of the sequel. To Dick Markham those hours, when he did not 'go' to sleep but was knocked out by it, remain only as a blank black severance from the real world until something pierced through it. Something clamoured and called with an intensity of shrillness...

Dick started to half-wakefulness, rolled, and saved himself from tumbling off to the floor. He had it now. The telephone was ringing.

Dazed-eyed, cramped about the back and waist, he struggled to sit upright. His first thought was that he had wormed out of a very unpleasant dream, something about Lesley Grant poisoning husbands; but, thank God, that was all over now. His next thought was surprise to find himself here on the sofa; and the lights burning; and the eastern windows tinged a pinkish-blue colour - ethereal, making the glass luminous - from the rising sun.

All this time the telephone kept ringing. He got up, on cramped leg-muscles, and stumbled across to the typewriter-desk. Though he was still only half awake when he picked up the receiver, the whispering voice which breathed out of the phone recalled him with its urgency.

'Colonel Pope's cottage,' said that thin voice. 'Come at once. If you don't come at once, you'll be too late’

The line went dead.

And Dick Markham remembered everything.

CHAPTER 7

'WHO'S speaking?' he said. 'Who's...?'

But there was no response. It had been a mere whisper of a voice, unidentifiable.

Putting down the receiver, Dick pressed his hands against his eyes and shook his head violently to clear it. The ghostly light outside the windows, its bluish tinge fading, washed this room with indeterminate colour. His wrist-watch had stopped, but the time must be past five o'clock.

There was not even time to think, now. He hurried out of the cottage, feeling grimy and unshaven as he emerged into the hush and dimness of morning, and ran eastwards along the lane as hard as he could run.

All sounds acquired a new sharpness in this dead world. The twitter of a bird, a rustle in the grass, the thud of his own running footfalls in a dirt lane, rose as clearly to the ear as the clean freshness of dew rose to the nostrils. He had passed the untenanted house, and was just within sight of Sir Harvey Gilman's cottage beyond, when he saw that something was happening there.

A light went on in the sitting-room.

Ahead of him it was still dusky. On his left, parallel with the lane, began the thick coppice of birches which pressed up along the stone boundary wall. On his right, some hundred odd yards ahead, stood the cottage. There was no obstruction in front of it: he could dimly see the whitewashed stone, and the black beams, and the low-pitched shingled roof, set back from the road in its front garden.

But beside and beyond it, also eastwards and parallel with the lane, stretched the thick orchard of fruit-trees which formed a kind of tunnel with the birch-copse opposite. That tunnel was the narrow lane. Through it poured narrowly the pinkish light, now tinged with watery yellow, of the rising sun.