A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

ordeal.

“Oh, well,” he said, with a small, hollow laugh, “I’ve never been in gaol before. It should be a rest-cure.”

From the corner of an alley at the far end of the square, Dominic watched them disappear into the dark doorway. When they were gone he came out of hiding, and began furiously to climb the steep streets inland, towards the upper town and Treverra Place. Inside him a weakening sceptic was still clamouring that it was impossible, that he was making a fool of himself, that there were dozens of possible interpretations of what he had heard, besides the obvious and yet obviously inaccurate one. But he went on walking, at his longest climbing stride, and with lungs pumping.

“Nobody even wanted it. But it happened, and I was the one who made it happen.” And then, in that quiet voice: “What do you think I shall get?”

It had to mean what he thought it meant, there was nothing else it could mean. But in that case it could tell him more, if he looked closely enough and carefully enough. “Nobody even wanted it.” It wasn’t intended, it wasn’t done deliberately. Not murder, then. “But it happened, and I was the one—” Still not murder, something that happened by Simon’s act, possibly by Simon’s fault, but not deliberately. Manslaughter, culpable homicide, but not murder. And he wasn’t expecting extremes in the penalty, either. “What do you think I shall get?” Dominic wished he’d been clever enough to blunder in just two or three seconds later, in time to hear the reply. To make it easier to tell, to answer some of the frantic anxieties that would result, before they could even be voiced. Because there was still just one thing a knowledgeable friend could do for Simon, in this extremity. And Dominic was the one person who knew exactly how to do it.

He arrived blown and panting at the absurd, top-heavy gates of Treverra Place, and took the drive a little more soberly, to recover his breath.

Tamsin was in the library, copy-typing catalogue notes, her underlip caught between her teeth, the reddish- gold fringe on her forehead bouncing gently to the slight vibration of her head. He marched straight to her desk, leaned a hand on either side the typewriter, and looked down into the startled face that warmed immediately into a smile for him. He wondered why he felt like the bearer of good news, when he was only the messenger of disaster. Still, you may as well pick up the better pieces even of a catastrophe, and see what they’ll make when you put them together.

“Tamsin, I’ve got something very urgent to tell you. I just ran slam into Dad and Simon outside the police station, and from what I heard, Simon has just given himself up for killing Trethuan.” That’s the way news should be delivered, if you want to know what people really feel about it.

“Simon?” cried Tamsin, eyes and tone flaring into partisan anger and derision. She was on her feet. “Simon murder someone? You’re out of your mind.”

“I didn’t say murder, I said killing. They were perfectly calm but deadly serious. And they’ve gone into the police station. I’d say what’s in the wind is manslaughter, at most. But it was Simon, I heard him say it himself. He said: ‘Nobody even wanted it. But it happened, and I was the one who made it happen.’ And then he asked Dad: ‘What do you think I shall get?’ Now you know everything I know. And what,” demanded Dominic, jutting his jaw at her, “are you going to do about it?”

She was a remarkable girl, he’d always known it. She had exclaimed once, and there was no more of that. She caught him by the shoulders and held him before her, so hard that she left the marks of her fingers on his arms, while she searched his face with wild blue eyes that had been like cornflowers a moment ago, and were now like spears.

“So that’s why!” she said in a rushing whisper. “Five days, and he hasn’t touched or looked at me. You’d have thought I had plague. Ever since it—And I thought he’d just been having fun with me! What does he think I am?”

“He wouldn’t let you be dragged into this. And you said he was spoiled and in bad need of a fall, anyhow.”

“Dragged in? Let him try and keep me out! The big, brilliant, incapable idiot, how did he get himself into this mess?”

“It’s nothing to you, anyhow,” pointed out Dominic, tasting a kind of slightly bitter but still unmistakable joy. “You wouldn’t have him. You don’t even like him.”

“I know I don’t. I could wring his neck! And anyhow, what do you know about it, Dominic Felse? The last time he asked me I didn’t tell him yes or no, I just walked away.” She had been all this time ricocheting about the room like an uncoiled spring, slamming the cover on her typewriter, grabbing her coat from a closet, sweeping the papers from the table into a drawer anyhow, just as they fell. “And now I’m walking back,” she said, turning the blue blaze of her indignation on Dominic, as if he had dared to challenge her. “Whether he likes it or not. I bet he hasn’t even got a lawyer. Can you get bail in a case like this?”

“I don’t know, I’m just the errand boy.” She had caught him by the hand and was towing him with her through the doorway; and there, caught close together, they turned to spare one hurried glance for each other, and she stretched across the remaining few inches, and kissed him on the mouth.

“With me, you’re royalty plus! But right now, if you can drive, you’re the chauffeur. I’ve just started lessons. Can you?”

“Yes, I’ve got a licence. But we can’t possibly take—”

“We can, we’re going to. We’ve got to get down there quickly. She’s out with Benson in the Morris right this minutes, but the Rolls is in the garage.”

“Rolls? Not likely!” gasped Dominic, appalled. “I’d be terrified to touch it. Suppose I went and scraped the paintwork?”

“You won’t!” she said, commanding, not reassuring.

And he didn’t. And perhaps that was all that was needed to crown this mad holiday with the right extravagant finale, the impossible fantasy of himself driving that glossy, purring, imperial monster doggedly and gloriously out of its garage and down through the steep, narrow streets of Maymouth to the square, with Tamsin bright and fierce as a fighting Amazon beside him, and parking it with the superb accuracy of sheer lunatic chance in a painted oblong only just big enough to contain it.

Tamsin patted his shoulder, and said something wild and fervent and complimentary, that he never even heard in his daze of retrospective terror, and was gone like an arrow across the square.

Dominic sat quivering with reaction, still clutching the wheel. He wasn’t even sure he could stand up now, he thought his knees would give under him if he climbed out and attempted to walk away. They didn’t; he got out,