Some Deaths Before Dying Page 5

  More pages. Views and details. The stable clock; the bell in its little turret; the boiler shed for the greenhouses. Not many interiors. The main staircase, of course, but few of the actual rooms, as they fitted in less well with Anne’s thesis, being surprisingly light and lively, though often oddly proportioned. Jocelyn’s parents, on moving in in the nineteen twenties, had redecorated in a nondescript but not unpleasing way; too late for arts and crafts, too early for art deco. Jocelyn, often radical in practical matters, was deeply conservative in his tastes. If a room needed to be done up, he didn’t see that it needed to be done differently.

  Tucked in at the end of the folder was a large plain envelope.

  “More photos,” said Dilys, peeking in. “Want to look, dearie? Here you are, then.”

  Spares. Other interiors. The greenhouses. The laundry. The fire escape again, looking dizzingly down from above. The old nursery—this very room. Last of all, Jocelyn at his desk in the study.

  “You’re supposed to be taking pictures of the house, aren’t you? You don’t want people in them.”

  “I need a focal point.”

  (Liar. She wanted a picture of him at his desk. It would be her fee for taking all this trouble for his Anne.)

  “Oh, if you must.”

  “You’re going to have to sit still when I tell you. It’ll be a long exposure because I don’t want to bring a lot of lights in. That’s why the sitters in some of those old photographs look as if they’d been stuffed.”

  “I can look stuffed as well as any man I know.”

  And, of course, he’d stayed as still as a tree stump while she counted the thirty seconds. You could see every wisp of his sparse, sandy hair. His hand, poised above the letter he was writing, had not quivered. His head was bent into the soft glow of the lamp, the rest of his body in shadow. Glow and shadow patterned the room. She had waited till the evening, because this was the hour she had wished to celebrate. Though there were more obviously comfortable rooms in the house, this was where they always sat when alone, a habit begun in the feebleness and chill of his homecoming, because coal had still been rationed and the study was simpler to make snug than anywhere else. She had moved two easy chairs in, and a worktable large enough for her to spread her photographs on. The result was a clutter, but he hadn’t once grumbled, even in jest, about her invasion of so male a sanctum. Though by his second winter Jocelyn had regained his robust indifference to temperature, and then fuel had become available and a modern oil-fired boiler had been installed, they had without any discussion stayed on here. As with so many things, they had grown to the shape of their discomforts, and would for a while have felt awkward anywhere else.

  Still, it was a strange room to have chosen, a kind of left-over space, all its proportions dictated by whatever lay on the other side of its walls. The chunk out of the corner opposite the door was the back stairs, whose existence also meant that there was only one window, looking out onto the kitchen yard. The fireplace was off centre in the left-hand wall, because the position of the flue was dictated by the dining room fireplace beyond. The fireplace wasn’t visible in the photograph, but part of the window was, and the intrusion of the back stairs.

  Rachel gazed at the picture. It was exactly as she had remembered, unsurprisingly, as it had stood on her worktable from the day she developed it until the morning after Jocelyn’s death, when she had taken it from its frame and put it back here. She had not then expected ever to want to look at it again. It was, in its way just as expressive of Jocelyn’s nature as the one of him with the Rover, just as full of the instant, but at the same time seeming to throb faintly with the movement of the web of time around it, invisible threads linking instant to instant, the whole life, the whole memory of that life, right up to this instant now in which she was looking at the photograph after an interval of almost forty years.

  It told her nothing that she did not already know. Half the box was clearly visible by the light of the desk lamp on the small table at Jocelyn’s right elbow. The further half was in shadow.

  “Thank you. Dilys,” she whispered. “Copy it for your niece. Copier in office.”

  “Lovely,” said Dilys. “I’m not that much of a writer, you see, and I feel stupid sending her just a page or two back, so it’ll be just what I want. Now, I’ll change our specs, shall I, and see what’s on the telly? Oh, Thursday—it’ll be that cooking programme you liked that last time.”

  “All right.”

  Dilys swung the bed to face the television, a large screen, mounted well up on the further wall, so that Rachel could watch it more easily. The cooking programme would do, anything would do that would distract her from thought and memory. She would have to face it sometime, sometime soon but not now, she was too tired, too disturbed…

  It wasn’t enough. As Dilys said, she usually enjoyed cooking programmes, despite the tendency of the presenters to thrust their personalities, always so much less pleasing than they seemed to imagine, at the viewer. Rachel herself had never been much of a cook—she had had no need—but she enjoyed watching the process, and the imagined taste seemed to help her to salivate, moistening her mouth for a while. But not today.

  Deliberately she had buried patches of memory, though not in the manner she had read about, where the person in question is no longer superficially aware that some hideous event took place. She had always known, just as she had known where she had hidden the pistol box and put the picture of Jocelyn at his desk. At any time in the past forty years she could, if she had chosen, have related in outline most of what had happened on the night that the young man came, but she had never chosen, never intentionally recalled any part of it. Sometimes, unwilled, a fragment would insinuate itself, but as soon as she was aware of it she would push it away, muttering angrily to herself about something irrelevant, until she could force herself to concentrate on the here and now.

  But today she lacked the willpower to do that. She would watch the programme for a little, lapse into a snatch of unwanted recall, drag herself clear, watch, and lapse again. Senility must be like this, she thought. Please God may my stupid body go first.

  “We’re still tired aren’t we?” said Dilys as the programme ended. “We must really have overdone things today.”

  Rachel attempted a “yes” smile, but her lips seemed not to respond and her mouth was too dry for speech. Dilys leaned over the bed, all blur, but her voice revealed her anxiety.

  “Worse than that, is it, dearie? Something’s really bothering us. Tsk, tsk. But you’d tell Dilys, wouldn’t you, if there’s anything I can do.”

  Rachel felt something happen, an actual physical event taking place in the citadel of her mind, a mine sprung, a crack opening in a rampart. To her shame and anger she was weeping again, those strange dry tears, the squeezings from an almost juiceless citrus.

  “Jocelyn’s pistol,” she heard her lips whisper. “She’s got Jocelyn’s pistol.”

  JENNY

  1

  Jenny carried the portable phone round the house as she bustled to be ready to leave. The moment it beeped she pressed the button and said “Hi,”

  “Mrs. Pilcher?” said a man’s voice—the wrong man.

  “Sorry. I can’t talk now. I’ve got a call coming. And if you’re selling something, no thanks. Bye.”

  In a few seconds the handset beeped again. This time she answered more cautiously.

  “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Pilcher. This is important—it’s about your pistol—“

  “It’s not mine, and it’s not for sale. Goodbye.”

  Brusquely she prodded the buttons. How the hell…? They’d promised the thing was absolutely confidential, no addresses passed on, no telephone numbers, not even names. And he was bound to try again. Yes.

  “Hello.”

  “That doesn’t sound very welcoming.”

  “Oh, hi, darling, thank God it’s you. I’m being persecuted by some dimwit. How’s it going?”

  “Dire. We tho
ught we’d got the breakthrough last session, I told you? Now they’ve got back to Alma-Ata overnight and been told to try and squeeze us some more.”

  “I want them dead. How long is this going on?”

  “You aren’t going to like this. The Kazakhs came in all smiles this morning and announced that they’re postponing the auction, so we’ve got a new deadline. Thursday.”

  “I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. I’m coming over for the weekend. I’ll get on the Chunnel tonight somehow…”

  “Oh, God! I wish you could.”

  “Champs-Elysces, here I come.”

  “No use, darling. We’ve been here four days and I’ve barely set foot out of the hotel. I haven’t been in a real restaurant, even. Billy loathes Paris…”

  “He probably thinks the French don’t take him seriously. He wouldn’t like that.”

  “Right. We’re only here because the Kazakhs wanted a go at the fleshpots, but if any of us isn’t under his eye Billy decides we’re hatching something up, so we all eat together in the hotel and then sit around in his suite all night pretending to go over the figures again…”

  “You must get to bed sometimes.”

  “Three o’clock, this morning.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you. In a terrific Paris nightie.”

  “Mmmmmh…I could chuck the job up, I suppose…I’m tempted…”

  She could hear that he meant it, and it wasn’t fair on him. Working for Billy Cochrane was already frustrating enough.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll let you off the hook. Next time you’re taking a doctor’s certificate with you and you can show it to bloody Billy and tell him that sexual frustration is bad for your mathematical abilities and it’ll cost the company billions if you get your sums wrong.”

  “I’ll try it if I get the chance. Look, what about next weekend? I could book us into a real hotel, not this plastic—“

  “It’s Barbara’s wedding. Besides, it’s you I want, not Paris. Got that? You.”

  “Mutual. Bloody hell…”

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “All right. What kind of a dimwit? Double glazing?”

  “No, I’m afraid it was about Uncle Albert’s pistol.”

  “I thought we’d got away with that. Some kind of dealer, I suppose. Didn’t they tell you they kept everything confidential? How did he get hold of you?”

  “I’ve no idea. He didn’t sound like a dealer, somehow. If he calls again, I’ll tell him to piss off. Don’t worry. Provided Uncle Albert himself didn’t see the programme. Anyway, don’t let’s waste time on that now. Are you all right? You don’t sound—“

  “I’m dog tired but still functioning. The breakouts are the worst. Billy keeps us at it trying to guess what the Kazakhs are up to, so we explore all the blind alleys only he can’t see they’re blind alleys until he’s taken us down them…”

  “Your problem is you’re too damn quick.”

  “Maybe, but it’s no use telling him in advance, because it makes it look as if I thought the lot of them were dead thick, but I’ve got to keep listening in case Billy swings on me suddenly and says ‘How does that work out, Jeff?’ and I’ve got thirty seconds flat to come up with the answer. How’s things with you though?”

  “I’m fine, apart from being miserable without you. But I’ve got piles of work to bring home because Trevor’s had to go into hospital and Jerry’s told me to go through his desk and sort out anything I can deal with—Trevor’s always behind with everything, anyway—and that’s on top of all my own stuff, so I haven’t got time to mope. There’s one of Trevor’s files which is bothering me a bit. I’ll tell you when I see you…and I’m on a crash diet so that I can really hog it with you when you get back. Duck and champagne?”

  “Spot on.”

  “They’re not going to change your deadline again?”

  “Not without postponing the auction again, which…anyway, if they do, I’ll tell Billy you’re coming over for the weekend, and they’re giving us time off together, and the company are paying your fare and hotel bill, or I’m chucking it in.”

  “You don’t have to, honestly.”

  “Yes, I know, but I’ve just about had it with Billy. Anyway, I think it will work this time. He can’t replace me that quick. It might be a blot on my copybook with the company, but Billy’s riding for a fall in case. It’s more his fault than anyone else’s that the deal’s got screwed up the way it has, though given the chance he’ll wriggle out of it.”

  “As far as I’m concerned Billy could shit for the universe. I’ve got to go now. Same time tomorrow. You’re going back to bed, I hope?”

  “For thirty-nine and a half minutes, I make it. Look after yourself, darling.”

  “You too.”

  She slammed her finger onto the off-button so hard that she broke the nail, and threw the handset onto the floor. Cursing at the top of her voice she flung the pillows across the room, ripped duvet and sheets from the bed—almost undisturbed after a night of sleeping single—swept Jeff’s pile of computer mags off the bedside table and kicked them across the carpet, rushed into the bathroom, tipped the empty laundry basket on its side and lashed at it with her feet, and finally, satisfyingly, stood on it, scrunching it flat, and then jumped on it until the wickerwork was splinters. Though nothing like this had happened for years, she was well aware what was going on. The rage was semi-deliberate, a tantrum, Norma-stuff. (“Now, this isn’t my sweet little Jenny. This is horrid Norma. I’m not interested in what Norma wants. She isn’t my daughter.”) Meanwhile Jenny herself—the Jenny people met and talked to and thought chilly and reserved—hovered aside, controlling the fit just enough to prevent any damage she would later regret. She had long disliked the laundry basket, enforced on Jeff by an earlier girlfriend.

  Now, as Norma stood panting amid the wreckage, Jenny whispered in her mind.

  “Better stop. I’ve got a client at nine-fifteen.”

  She took a deep breath, let it go with a whoosh and was Jenny again. For the moment her main superficial emotion was surprise. Why now? For years she had known how to control these angers, keep them rational, channel and focus the pressure onto a target—a jet, not an explosion. Why this sudden loosening? She stared at the wreckage of the laundry basket, sensing it to be an omen, but baffled how to read it.

  Turning to the basin, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, a known face, her mother, just woken but still half drunk. She’d been crying, she noticed.

  “You’re disgusting,” she told the image.

  Furious again, but this time with her normal efficient Jenny-anger, she cleaned herself up and dressed in her grey suit, with pearl earrings and pin. No time for breakfast—she couldn’t have swallowed it anyway. Her briefcase and laptop were ready in the hall. She slipped a banana into the case and left. After locking the door she paused and gave the inner pillar of the absurd little portico a pat, a pat for the whole house.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she told it, as if speaking to a pet dog, made anxious by a spat among the humans. “You’re all right.”

  2

  By dusk there was a chill drizzle slanting from the northeast, more like February than late March. The timer had turned the lights on, as if the house was doing its best to look welcoming, but this evening that wasn’t enough.

  Anyone coming new to the house would have noticed only—as Jenny herself had, first time—the Ashford Road roaring and stinking by, and then, once inside, would have been mainly impressed by the view across the Weald, with the roofs of oast houses poking above the treetops. One large defect, one medium asset, the little house a sort of null value in between. It had taken Jenny herself several weeks of living in it to appreciate the quirky personality to which she had spoken so affectionately that morning. The line of the road must have been changed after it was built, but before the terrace of basic nineteen-twentyish houses to its right, so that it stood at an obstinate slant both to them and to
the bramble-tangled belt of scruffy woodland to its left. And it even more emphatically asserted its indifference to their respective regularity and wilderness because its builder had apparently been determined to cram all the stock ornamentation he could onto its frontage—a kind of flattened portico, with barley-sugar pillars; above that an iron balcony too narrow to stand on; at the southeast corner a squat spire with an elaborate lightning conductor, and best of all, the pairs of cherubim on either side, apparently supporting the upper windowsills. They had sulky expressions as if the weight gave them headaches. (Jeff, of course, hadn’t bought it for any of that. It had been what he could then afford, because of the road.)

  This evening Jenny’s affection wasn’t enough. She couldn’t summon up the personality. The house was dead, empty, because Jeff wouldn’t be home for almost a week. She had spent most of the day on Trevor’s leavings, and had brought her own work back to fill the dismal hours, but that would make them no less dismal. And worse, she would spend them thirsting for a drink. She and Jeff usually had a couple of glasses of wine each with their supper and she was now habituated to that, but she had long ago recognised in herself the risk of going the same way as her mother—it was in her genes, she thought—and had made and kept an inner promise that she would never drink alone. She would keep it still, tonight, and for the next five nights, but it would be hell.

  Numbly she let herself in, switched off the alarm and went upstairs. The bedroom was a strewn chaos. She’d forgotten that she’d left it like that, but clearing it up was something to do. She changed into jeans, but had hardly started on the mess when the doorbell rang.

  She went down, put the front door on the chain and opened it a crack.

  “Mrs. Pilcher?”

  She recognised the voice at once.

  “Oh, it’s you. You called this morning. I’m sorry, but I’m really not interested. The pistol doesn’t belong to me, and I know the owner doesn’t want to sell it.”