‘They don’t know anything of the sort.’
‘Oh yes they do! You, and the rest. It’s no good saying anything. I’m the one they want to hang.’
‘Listen to me, Simmonds!’
‘No… I’m tired of listening…’
‘I’m the one who counts, not that pack of wolves down there. And I haven’t charged you, have I? I haven’t even put it to you! At the moment you’re simply a material witness, and I don’t expect that you’ll be anything else. So why not stop playing up to them and come back inside?’
‘I’ve told you… I don’t care.’
‘You do, and you’re going to show it.’
‘They can think what they like — only let me alone! I don’t want to talk and I’m tired of listening.’
A movement below him warned Gently that he was losing. The photographers, who had relaxed, now froze again behind their cameras. The one lens was staring towards him like a petrified eye, one was slightly tilted, one riveted upon the turf… and once more, from overhead, came the sound of a scraping shoe.
‘Simmonds!’
He felt the panic racing in his veins.
‘Simmonds!’
‘Go away. I won’t listen any more.’
Suddenly the scraping became a scrabbling noise, violent and desperate: the sound of a foot searching madly for a hold. The up-turned faces swayed as though caught by a wind, some were being hidden, some twisted away. And then — it stopped, that scrabbling. The foot had found its hold. And a groan drifted up like the moaning of the sea.
‘Simmonds!’
Gently found himself whispering it too softly to be heard. He didn’t need telling that he had lost in that encounter. Simmonds had heard what he could say, and he daren’t say any more: now, a repetition of it might be hastening the end. At least the artist had struggled when he felt himself beginning to slip.
‘I’ve locked the door down there, sir.’
Dutt toiled wearily out of the stairway.
‘They was making a fuss about the church being public, but I barged them outside and turned the key pretty quick. I reckoned it wasn’t public, sir, unless we said so.’
Gently shrugged, passing a dirty hand over his face. He could still hear the scuffling of that fear-stricken foot. Would he have watched as Simmonds’s body went plunging past him… would he have held to his post during the next few seconds?
‘The Fire Service — why the devil isn’t it here?’
Dutt echoed the shrug. ‘Will it be any use, sir?’
‘That isn’t the point — it ought to be here! Isn’t it part of their job to handle a business of this kind?’
He went stumping down the stairs in a blaze of irrational anger. Twenty minutes had passed and no fire engine arrived! But at heart he knew it was because he would never have watched that fall… and because, in turning away from it, he would have in some way felt traitorous.
Towards whom? Towards what? — he didn’t want to understand! There was nothing to be done except to be angry with the Fire Service.
Under the tower a fresh enterprise had engaged the crowd’s attention. The vicar was ascending the ladder, presumably with the object of addressing Simmonds. He was a neat, smallish man who carried his three-score years with a flourish; he had short grey hair and a pallid, boyish face. He made no bones at all about frisking up the ladder.
‘Young man up there!’
His voice was clear, and ringing. Even hanging on to a ladder he preserved an air of clerical dignity.
‘Young man, are you aware of the gravity of your behaviour? Are you aware of the awful sin you are about to commit before the eyes of God?’
Simmonds was perched exactly where Gently had first seen him, a little to the left of the belfry window. There could be no doubt that he had shuffled along the ledge and perilously knelt for that abortive interview.
‘Young man, I am praying for you, I am praying for your enlightenment. May God, in His infinite mercy, remove the cloud from your understanding. He it was Who gave you life, not, as you presume, to be wilfully disposed of.’
Was he listening, pressed to the stones, the blood now drying on his restless hands?
Hawks, Gently saw, had edged a yard or two closer, his expression changed to one of indignant anxiety. His dark eyes were boring into the figure of the artist, he seemed to be willing him to make the fatal decision.
‘Dare you face your Creator, young man, in such sin? Will you meet Him this day with such a burden of guilt?’
A little girl began to cry and was snatched up by her mother: a man, looking pale, seated himself upon a tombstone.
‘I beseech you to think again — think of those who hold you dearly.’
If Simmonds would just keep still with those Cainlike hands.
‘Your life is a precious thing, redeemed for you by Christ Jesu: put your trust in the Lord and preserve your immortal soul!’
The vicar had done and was bowing his head in prayer. Several of those round about had their hats in their hands. In all it was like a sacrament, a last rite for the dying; all earthly aid had been rendered, only the event now remained. And Simmonds… his hands were stiffening, they were pressing him out into the void: he was balancing on the edge only a hairbreath from eternity.
‘No!’
The stifled cry coming from him scarcely seemed a human utterance. It was wrenched from between teeth set together like a trap.
‘I don’t want to die. Oh God, I don’t want to! Get me down off here… get me… get me down!’
He was back against the wall, scooping at it in a frenzy. For the first time he seemed to understand his frightful position. He cringed against the flint, his knees sagging, his body trembling: they could hear his breath coming in little suffocated gasps.
‘Someone get me down!’
His face was ghastly with its terror. Nothing remained of the insensate coolness which till now had carried him along.
‘I don’t want to die… help me… come and get me down!’
In a moment or two, it seemed, he must slither off the ledge.
And nobody could do a thing! They would liked to have done, now. The whole current of the affair had undergone a change. Simmonds was no longer braving them, flouting them, indicting them: with his terror and his cries he was back on their side.
‘Simmonds… get back on the roof!’
‘Get back — get back!’
Gently’s shout was repeated by a hundred different voices. ‘Reach up to the parapet — pull yourself over!’
‘Put your foot on the spout!’
‘Just heave and roll over!’
Sobbing and panting the artist made a feeble effort, but in doing so he nearly lost his balance on the ledge. He screamed like a child and fell back into a crouch. A piece of loose rubble fell pattering among the reporters.
‘Can’t we get up inside?’
There was a panic to be doing something. Two fishermen wanted to run for their nets. Remembering the bell, Gently sent Dutt to guard the church door. Dyson had popped up in the phone box where he was bawling unintelligibly to someone.
‘Get me down… get me down!’
Simmonds’s voice had sunk to a wail, and the quality of death itself was echoing in that plea. He couldn’t last for very much longer — you could hear it in every vibration. Like a dislodged sack of flour he was going to slither from his perch.
