«I'll tell you everything. Just come here. Come, come, at once, in a taxi, every moment matters.»
«Rachel, is Julian all right?»
«Yes, yes, yes, just come-I paid the taxi with trembling hands, dropping the money all over the place, and ran up the path and began banging on the knocker. Rachel opened the door at once.
I hardly recognized her. Or rather, I recognized her as a portentous revenant, the weeping distraught figure of the beginning of the story, her face grossly swollen with tears and, it seemed, again bruised, or perhaps just dirtied as a child's may be after much rubbing away of tears.
«Rachel, there's been a car accident, they've telephoned, she's hurt? What's happened, what's happened?»
Rachel sat down on a chair in the hall and began to moan, uttering great terrible ringing moans, swaying herself to and fro.
«Rachel-something terrible has happened to Julian-what is it? Oh God, what has happened?»
Rachel got up after a moment or two, still moaning and supporting herself against the wall. Her hair was a thick tangled frizzy mass, like the hair of the insane, torn at and dragged across her brow and eyes. Her mouth, all wet, was open and shuddering. Her eyes, oozing great tears, were slits between the swollen lids. Laboriously, like an animal, she pushed past me, still leaning with one hand on the wall, and made her way towards the door of the drawing-room. She pushed it open and made a gesture forward. I followed her into the doorway.
Arnold lay sideways, his knees up, one hand palm upward extended towards my foot. His eyes were half closed, showing a glint of white eyeball, his teeth were gritted together and the lips slightly withdrawn from them as if in a snarl. There was blood caking his pale tossed hair and dried in marbled patterns on his cheek and neck. I could see that the skull was appallingly dinted at the side, the darkened hair descending into the depression, as if Arnold's head had been made of wax and someone had pressed strong fingers hard in. A vein at the temple still oozed a little.
A large poker was lying on the carpet where the blood was. The blood was red and sticky, the consistency of custard, skinning a little on the surface.1 touched, then held, Arnold's tweedy shoulder, warm with the sun, trying to stir him a little, but he seemed as weighty as lead, bolted to the floor, or else my trembling limbs had no strength. I stepped back with blood upon my shoes, and trod upon Arnold's glasses which were lying just beyond the circle of blood.
«Oh God-you did that-with the poker-She whispered, «He's dead-he must be-is he?»
«I don't know-Oh God-«He's dead, he's dead,» she whispered.
«Have you sent for the-Oh Christ-what happened?»
«I hit him-we were shouting-I didn't mean-then he started screaming with pain-I couldn't bear to hear him screaming like that-I hit him again to stop him screaming-«We must hide the poker-you must say it was an accident-Oh what shall we do-He can't be dead, he can't be-«I kept calling him and calling him and calling him, but he wouldn't move.» Rachel was still whispering, standing in the doorway of the room. She had stopped crying and her staring eyes seemed larger and wider, she kept rubbing her hands rhythmically upon her dress.
«He may be all right,» I said. «Don't worry. Did you ring the doctor?»
«He's dead.»
«Did you ring the doctor?»
«No.»
«I'll get the doctor-And the police-I suppose-And an ambulance-Tell them he fell and hit his head or something-Oh Christ-I'll take the poker away anyhow-Better say he hit you and-«
I picked up the poker.1 stared for a moment at Arnold's face. The sightless eye-glint was terrible. I felt sick urgent panic, the desire to hand this nightmare over as quickly as possible to somebody else. As I moved towards the door I saw something on the floor near Rachel's feet. A screwed-up ball of paper. Arnold's writing. I picked it up and brushed past her where she still stood leaning in the doorway. I went out into the kitchen and put the poker down on the table. The ball of paper was Arnold's letter to me about Christian. I took out a box of matches and began to burn the letter in the sink. It kept falling into a basin of water since my hands would not obey me. When at last I had reduced it to ashes I turned the tap on it. Then I started washing the poker. Some of Arnold's hair was stuck to it with blood. I dried it and put it away in a cupboard.
«Rachel, I'm going to telephone. Shall I telephone just a doctor or the police as well? What are you going to say?»
«It's no good-« She turned back into the hall, and we stood there together in the dim light beside the stained-glass panel of the front door.
«You mean it's no good not telling the truth?»
«No good-«
«But you must tell them it was an accident-that he hit you first-that it was self-defence-Rachel, shall I telephone the police? Oh do please try to think-'
She murmured something.
«What?»
«Dobbin. Dobbin. My darling-«
I realized, as she now turned away, that this must be her pet name for Arnold which in all the years I had known them I had never heard her utter. Arnold's secret name. She turned away from me and went into the dining-room, where I heard her fall, onto the floor or perhaps into a chair. I heard her begin to lament once more, a short cry, then a shuddering «fa-fa-fa-« then the cry again. I went back into the drawing-room to see if Arnold had moved. I almost feared to see him opening accusing eyes, wriggling with the pain which Rachel had found so unendurable. He had not moved.
His position seemed now as inevitable as that of a statue. Already he did not look like himself any more, his grimacing expression that of a complete stranger, expressing, like a Chinaman, some quite strange and unrecognizable emotion. His sharp nose was red with blood, and there was a little puddle of blood in his ear. The white eye glinted, the pained mouth snarled. As I turned from him I noticed his small feet, which I had always found so characteristic and so annoying, clad in immaculately polished brown shoes, lying neatly together as if comforting each other. And as I moved to the door I now saw little smears of blood everywhere, on the chairs, on the wall, on the tiles of the fireplace, where in some unimaginable scene in some quite other region of the world he had reeled about; and saw upon the carpet the shadowy marks of bloody footprints, his, Rachel's, mine.
I got to the telephone in the hall. Rachel's cries were softening into little almost dreamy wails. I dialled 999 and got a hospital and said there had been a bad accident and asked for an ambulance. «A man has hurt his head. His skull cracked I think. Yes.» Then after a moment's hesitation I rang the police and said the same things. My own fear of the police made any other course unthinkable. Rachel was right, concealment was not possible, better to reveal all at once, anything was better than the horror of being «found out.» It was no good saying Arnold had fallen downstairs. Rachel was in no condition to be taught a cover story. She would blurt out the truth in any case.
I went into the dining-room and looked at her. She was sitting on the floor with her mouth wide open and her two hands squeezing either side of her face. I saw her mouth as a round O, she looked subhuman and damned, her face without features, her flesh drained and blue, like those who live underground. «Rachel. Don't worry. They're coming.»
«Dobbin. Dobbin. Dobbin.»
I went out and sat on the stairs and found that I was saying, «Oh-oh-oh-oh-« and could not stop.
The police arrived first. I let them in and pointed to the back room. Through the open front door I saw the sunny street and cars coming, an ambulance. I heard somebody say, «He's dead.»
«What happened?»
«Ask Mrs. Baffin. In there.»
«Who are you?»
Men in dark clothes were coming in, then men in white clothes.
The dining-room door was shut. I was explaining who Arnold was, who I was, how I came to be there.
«Cracked his skull like an egg shell.»
Rachel screamed behind a closed door.
«Come with us, please.»
I sat in a police car between two men. I started explaining again. I said, «He hit her, I think. It was an accident. It wasn't murder.»
At the police station I told them all over again who I was. I sat with several men in a small room.
«Why did you do it?»
«Do what?»
«Why did you kill Arnold Baffin?»
«I didn't kill Arnold Baffin.»