the water closet) I pissed by the sweet-smelling compost pens.
When I returned to my former post on the terrace, Usher was speaking to the wife, and I did not like this connection between them. If it continued, I would have to put aside my claret, top-class vintage though it might be, and lay the bastard out.
‘Are you quite opposed to violence on behalf of your cause?’ he was asking Lydia.
‘Not absolutely,’ replied the wife. ‘Are you in the case of yours, Captain Usher?’
He gave a half-smile that made his handsomeness double. Lydia never called a man handsome, but you could tell when she thought it. I put my hand into my inside pocket, and there was a single paper there. Lydia said something else about the women’s movement, and Usher, lighting a cigarette, said, ‘Hear, hear!’ He seemed to be making out that he agreed with her, but how could he? A man like that was sure to be an Ultra.
I heard the faint sound of the Adenwold clock striking midnight as Milly Chandler stepped onto the lawn with a glass in her hand, calling out that she was looking for glow-worms. A bottle of whisky and a siphon were now on the go, and a cigar box started doing the rounds. As long as both of these stayed away from me, I would not be sick.
Instead, Bobby Chandler came over.
‘Lydia and the Captain are hitting it off rather well,’ he said, but I would not rise to the bait. Instead I asked him in a rather slurring voice about Hardy, the station master.
‘I’ve seen him once or twice,’ said Chandler. ‘My brother-in-law told me to look out for him as one of the leading curiosities of the village. To George, the man was a buffoon, plain and simple, but I wonder. He’s an amateur historian, you know — hides from the world. His only refuge is with those toy soldiers of his. Seen them, have you?’
‘A lot of people around here like midget objects,’ I said, for some reason.
More claret came.
‘Could you manage some more?’ asked the manservant, and I replied ‘Yes’ but I knew it would be a struggle. I was crippling myself with this stuff — it was beyond all reason. Was I alcoholic? If not, it was probably because of Lydia. That was the great thing about having a wife. She checked your drinking.
Chandler was moving away from me; John Lambert remained sitting on the far step. My hand still rested on the paper in my pocket. I took it out, and saw the docket that Will Hamer the carter had given me — the proof of the wire having been sent.
Usher was still speaking to Lydia, and still his speech was well-greased.
‘The ladies might break a few windows in Oxford Street,’ he was saying, ‘but is that so serious a matter? It seems to me they are driven to it not by a deep malice, but simply by the excitement of the moment.’
‘No,’ the wife cut in.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Usher.
‘They are not driven to it by the excitement of the moment, but by the injustices of the centuries.’
‘The excitement of the moment or the injustice of the centuries,’ said Usher. ‘I am not going to split hairs over that. The point I wish to make is that they are handled too roughly by the ordinary constables.’
I watched the wife’s face. I knew when she was likely to give trouble, and all the warning signs were there, but Usher of course could not see them. He was lighting another cigarette. He drew a line of fire in the dark-blue air as he waved out the Vesta, saying:
‘The ladies have a will of iron. Unfortunately, their bodies are not made of iron, and all concerned should act accordingly. The watchword of the constables ought to be: “Remember these are ladies — handle with care.”’
The wife stood up from the sofa and folded her arms. Poor old Usher had jarred, for if there was one thing the wife disliked more than unkind remarks about the women’s cause, it was kind remarks about it.
I addressed myself again to the data on the docket or receipt in my hand, which seemed to be perpetually being replaced by another version of itself dropped from above, like raindrops repeatedly falling on the same spot. I would make out one or two words, and then it would drop again. As I finally made sense of the receipt and lowered it slowly onto my knees, I noticed that the Chief was looking across the terrace towards me.
He had arrived before the telegram had been sent.
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-Four
The butler or manservant gave us a storm lantern, and we used it to light the way back to The Angel. It made the trees swing and rear up as we pushed on, the wife talking about Usher, and how he’d said the women’s cause could ‘bring the women up’, and other wrong things.
‘I don’t think John Lambert’s in any danger,’ she said. ‘Usher’s an ass. But still, you can see that Lambert needs to be taken in hand. He has a condition of some kind, a mental… a sort of hysteria, I’m sure brought on by what’s going to happen to his brother.’
Her success at the party had made her over-confident, it seemed.
‘We women have wills of iron but very frail bodies, you know,’ she ran on. ‘I suppose Captain Usher’s body is made of iron. I’d say his brain probably is.’
She broke off in her speech when our light showed a fox on the track before us.
I was drunk but not, as it turned out, in the worst way, for it had been good wine. I felt outside of myself somehow, and revolved my new discovery just as though it had no power to harm me. The paper in my pocket showed that the wire asking the Chief to come to Adenwold had not been transmitted until 12.30, whereas he had arrived by the 12.27 train. I had no idea what had gone wrong with Will Hamer, his rulley or his beasts, but there were any number of possibilities. The Chief had not come to the village on my account; he had arrived quite independently.
I began trying to explain this to the wife, but she was hardly listening, and did not take the point.
‘… It was only a coincidence that we coincided at the station,’ I said, and she asked, cheerfully enough:
‘How drunk are you, Jim?’
In our room, we kissed in a friendly way, for she knew she’d been the star of the evening, even if wrongly dressed and not invited to the meal. Then I turned out the lantern, and the slice of moon moved right up to the open window. I watched it from the pillow thinking: I am investigating my own Chief. Nothing could be worse for my prospects or more generally shocking, but I went directly to sleep nonetheless.
I awoke at the chime of three, however, and knew that I could not put off finding an answer.
I stood up, dressed and caught up the lantern we’d been given at the Hall. The wife changed position twice as I did so, but she slept on. Outside the front door of the inn, I lit the lantern, and set off back for the Hall.
The lantern showed swinging, grey-coloured pictures of Adenwold: closed doors, shuttered windows, high blank hedges. I took the early track through the woods, and followed it to the rear gate of the Hall, which now stood unattended. I moved fast across the grass, approaching the lines of cone-shaped trees.
The Chinese lanterns on the terrace were now only so much dangling litter, objects of no significance, long since burnt out. The table had been removed, but a line of empty bottles remained on the bottom step of one of the two staircases.
Light glowed from two of the house windows. I turned the lamp off and went up the steps into the mathematical garden. I was not sticking to the complicated paths: I went as the crow flies, and I could feel ornamental plants falling under my boots.
The light in the sky was ash-coloured, a sort of emergency light. There was just enough to see what was important. I had now reached the low windows of the rear of the house, and a voice in my head put the question: Where are you going? A sash window standing open gave the answer. I ducked down and I was in, coming bang up against a piano. I took out my matches, and relit the lantern. The room grew as the light flared — a long yellow
