A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

They had come down to the southern corner of the harbour, and halted there to lean on the railings shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the smooth brown mud and the stranded boats close to them, and the gleaming quiet water beyond, lipping so softly now at the masonry of the mole. Watery sun gilded the small, scalloped waves. The tide was well out, but not yet at its lowest. Simon clenched his hands on the rail, and stared blindly before him, and the screaming flight of gulls wheeling round them was only a pattern of sound to him for a moment. He shut his eyes hard, and shook his head, and the dizziness passed.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping so well.” He passed a hand over his eyes, and in a moment he said: “No, it wasn’t Paddy!” and again was silent.

“You’d better tell it,” George said reasonably. “You know best.”

“You know already. It was just as you said. It was the blind, bloody meanness and stupidity of it that got me,” he said, suddenly shivering with detestation. “I blow up, sometimes. One thing Paddy’s got from me, worse luck! —wouldn’t you know it would be something like that I’d give him?—is that temper of his. If you’ve ever seen it in action? No, I suppose not. Tim’s the patient one, Tim’s done wonders with him. But it can still happen, to Paddy and to me. And there was this creature capering and crowing that he’d heard me admit Paddy was my son! You’re so right, to him that meant just one thing, and he thought it was all he needed. If I wouldn’t call the whole thing off, he’d tell Tim!

“It was ludicrous, it didn’t mean a thing, it was no threat to anyone, how could it be? I burst out laughing in his face. And then he called Phil—the sort of name—Phil! The truest soul alive, and the one I’ve injured most already!

“And I hit him.

“I don’t know if it makes sense to you. It was somehow the one thing I couldn’t stand. After all I’d done to them, making use of them for my own ends when it suited me, and then wanting to steal Paddy back—because I did want to, very badly. And then on top of everything, this futile, meaningless, humiliating bit of dirt. You can’t imagine how horribly it offended.”

“I think,” said George mildly, “I can. You’re sure he didn’t lose his head and hit out at you first? Or shape towards it? When you laughed at him, for instance?”

“Don’t tempt me, George. I’m a dodger but not a liar. He never raised a hand.”

“Did you ever, even for an instant, mean to kill him?”

“Good lord, no! Well,—I don’t think so. I don’t know that I meant anything. I just blew up. I hit him with everything I’d got, but I give you my word I only hit him once. I even woke up in time to make one wild grab at him as he dropped, but he slipped through my fingers. I’d turned, you see, when he came up to me, there was the rise of the Dragon’s Head on my right, and the drop to the deep water outside the haven on my left. If I lash out, it’s always with the right. I hadn’t thought how it would swing him round. I hadn’t thought at all, it was too quick for thought. It wasn’t quite a sheer fall, we weren’t that near the edge. He went lurching two or three strides downward, and then lost his footing and rolled. Before I could slither after him he was over the edge. He dropped into the deep water. I think he must have been stunned, because he never came up.”

The lines of strain had eased a little, blood was coming back to his face. He drew breath deeply, and let go of the rail.

“We’d better be moving along, hadn’t we?”

“When you’re ready.”

“You’re not in any hurry to turn me in, are you?” said Simon, with the first reviving smile.

“I’m not turning you in. And there never was any hurry. We hadn’t got a murderer at large to worry about. Go on, if you care to. You went in after him, didn’t you?”

“How did you know that?” He was capable of feeling surprise again.

“Because you went in again with Dominic afterwards, so long afterwards that it couldn’t have been with any hope of finding him alive. It must have been full tide when he fell, if there was deep water off the haven. It was at least half an hour past when you showed up on the beach with the boys. So either it was just for the look of the thing generally—which isn’t entirely convincing where you’re concerned—or because you wanted to account satisfactorily for wet hair and wet underclothes. The boys wouldn’t be noticing that you were wet already, before you went in, they were much too preoccupied then.”

“That’s pretty good, but I can tell you one more reason. I’d skinned my knuckles on the right hand, when I hit him. Diving and swimming round those rocks, I made the other hand match. I hadn’t thought about that the first time. You can get cut about quite extensively if you’re not careful. Paddy was quite concerned, when we were cleaning up afterwards, and he saw them.” He looked down with a dark, remembering smile at the backs of his hands, the points of the knuckles still marked with small, healed lesions.

“Yes, I went in after him. I scrambled down the rock path, and shed my top clothes, and dived and dived for him until I was worn out, and by then it would have been no good, anyhow. It was pretty rough going, but I’m a strong swimmer. And after that, I suppose, it came over me what I’d done, and I knew I had to get away from there, fast. I couldn’t get through the Dragon’s Hole, or I’d have beat it through there and let myself be seen along the harbour. But it was deep under water at that time. All I could do was put on my clothes and bolt back up the cliff path, and work round by the Maymouth side on to the road. And when I came up over the neck on my way home I saw your boy hauling Paddy out of the rough water. I ran down to them, and you know the rest. I went in and worked hard for the complete answer to why my hair was wet and my knuckles skinned. Praying we wouldn’t find him. Praying he’d never be found.

“And that’s all. Except that Sam said, that night, he’d probably come in on the Mortuary with the next high tide. That gave me a shock. I’m not a native, that was something I didn’t know.”

“And the first thing you thought of was Paddy running down to the beach about seven o’clock in the morning and finding him.”

“Wouldn’t it be the first thing that would have occurred to you? If the body was going to be cast up here, I wanted to be the one to find it, not Paddy. I was awake all night, brooding about it, and before it was light I got up and dressed, and sneaked out while everybody else was asleep. High tide was about a quarter past four that morning. I bet I was down on the shore before five.

“And he was there! I hadn’t really believed in it till then, but he was there. Miles of sand every way, and he was a big fellow, and dead weight. And the sea was no good, the sea wouldn’t have him. There was only the church anywhere near for a hiding-place. And the key of the vault was in my pocket. So I put him in there. We had