Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart

“Have we asked you any questions about Mr. Arundale’s death, sir? I don’t recollect that we have.”

“You don’t have to ask me, I’m telling you. I want to tell you. I’m sick of being the only one who knows.”

“It’s a free country,” allowed Rapier considerately. “But no charge has been made against you formally yet on any count. I shouldn’t be in any hurry to make statements, if I were you.”

“But if I do, you’ll keep a record of it? Not that I care, except that I’d rather get it over in one. I’m so damned tired.”

“Very well, sir, if that’s what you want. But you will bear in mind that I’ve cautioned you.” And with the minimum of movement and fuss, suddenly the sergeant had his notebook on his knee, and his ball-pen in his hand. Probably wise to the fact that I’m one of those contra-suggestible types, thought Lucien bitterly. If they seem to be heading in the direction you want them to go, push like the devil the other way, and they’ll persist. If you give them a hand, they’ll turn back.

“Oh, I give you full credit for that. But it’s all right, I want it finished now. It never should have begun. It was all unnecessary.”

He moistened his lips nervously. How much did they know? Better assume they knew most of it. How could Felicity keep her mouth shut for long, once she realised what she’d unleashed. And even if they hadn’t yet recovered everything the river was supposed to conceal, they soon would when the level went down. No, better leave out nothing that was there to be found.

“I was down by the river,” he said, and shivered as if he’d plunged into its coldness, “and the kid had followed me there, the warden’s niece, the Cope girl. She’d been round my neck ever since I’d got to Follymead, I couldn’t shake her. And I was in a miserable way because I’d quarrelled with my own girl, and she was around, too, and things were pretty bad with me. I wanted to get somewhere by myself, and think, and there was this silly little thing bleating about love, when she didn’t know she was born yet. I stood it a long time, and then I blew up. All I wanted was to get rid of her, and I wasn’t particular how I did it. I’m not proud of it now. I suppose it was about the cruellest thing I’ve ever done. I gave her a message to take to her aunt… to Mrs. Arundale… as if there was something between us. There wasn’t, of course, I only met the lady a couple of times before. It was just that Felicity was already mad jealous of her aunt, that’s why I made it her. It cut deeper. And it worked, too. She took offence and walked off and left me there, and that was all I wanted. I never thought she’d go and deliver the damned message, right out in front of both of them… or just to him, I don’t know… to him, anyhow, because he came. I’d said to tell Mrs. Arundale I was waiting for her there. But it was her husband who came.”

The sergeant’s hand seemed to do no more than idle over the paper, spraying shorthand symbols like rain. But he wasn’t missing anything. And he could still spare one eye, occasionally, for a quick glance at his prisoner’s face.

“Must have been a bit of a shock, when you expected Mrs. Arundale,” he said sympathetically.

“I didn’t expect anyone. I told you, all I meant to do was shoo the Cope girl away. I never thought she’d have the devilment – I don’t know, though, I asked for it! – or the guts, either.” Lucien shivered, a nervous compulsion that ran through his bones in a sharp contraction of cold. “He was there before I knew. I wasn’t paying any attention to anything. I was just glad to be alone, and then there he was coming out of the trees, with this thing in his hand…” A compulsive yawn followed the chill; he smothered it in his hands, and shook himself violently. He wasn’t through the wood yet, he had to keep his mind clear.

“This thing…?” said Rapier, patiently nudging.

“Maybe you don’t know it. It hangs in the gallery there, among a lot of other exotic junk, Victorian, maybe older. The Cope kid showed it to us when we went round the house, the first evening. It’s a black walking-stick with a silver handle, but really it’s a sword inside an ebony sheath. I knew it as soon as I saw it, but I never thought… He just drew it out and came at me. Never said a word, simply ran at me with the blade. I tried to talk to him, but there was no time at all, and anyhow I doubt if he could even hear. He looked quite mad… stone-cold mad. I couldn’t believe in it, I nearly let him get me because I couldn’t take it in. But then I knew he meant killing, and I just put the rocks between us in time, and ducked aside into the trees, hoping to beat him to the gate and get away. But he saw what I was about, and cut back there as fast as I did. I got my hand to the latch, and then he was on top of me, and I jumped round and put up my other arm to fend him off, and the tip of the blade ripped my fingers…” He flexed them painfully, and there indeed was the sliced cut, imperfectly healed, crossing all four fingers diagonally between second joints and knuckles. “And the latch had pulled half out of its place, so I knew it was free, and I pulled it out.”

He shut his face tightly between his palms, trying to suppress the sick yawns that were tearing at him now like bouts of pain. Queer the way you reacted when the time came, mentally calm but physically disrupted, a rash of nervous symptoms with a tensed and wary mind. This pause he prolonged in the hope of eliciting a question, anything that would make things easier for him, and give him a signpost, but Rapier waited politely with his ballpoint suggestively poised, and said not a word.

“But I had to spring away from the gate to get out of range. And then he was between me and it, and even if I had a weapon I couldn’t match his reach. He drove me down towards the water again, and all I could do was try to parry his strokes. But then it was no good backing any more, I should have been in the river, so I had to try and jump him. I’m no more good at that than he was, and I was in a state by men, and… I don’t even know exactly what happened. We were struggling together there, and I hit him… He went down. I didn’t know I’d hurt him badly, the only thing I thought about was to grab the sword, while he was stunned. But after a few minutes, when he still didn’t move, I got scared, and took a closer look at him. His head was like a ploughed field, and yet there was next to no blood. He wasn’t breathing, and with a head that shape he wasn’t going to breathe again. I knew I’d killed him. And all for nothing. I never wanted to, I hardly knew him… What was I supposed to do, with that on my hands?” he appealed passionately.

“The right thing,” said Rapier, accepting this literally, “in a case like that, would be to leave everything as it is, call the police, and tell them the whole story.”

“And how many ever do the right thing, when they get into a jam like that? Try it, some day, and see if you don’t do what I did – run. There wasn’t a thing I could do for him. He was dead. I pulled him to the edge of the river, and threw him as far out as I could, into the current, and I saw it take him downstream over the weir. I threw the sword-stick and the latch in the pool there. And I remembered that he was supposed to start for Birmingham, and his car was out in the yard ready. So I took it. Nobody’d look for him again until Sunday night. But you can’t get money out of banks or turn other assets into cash on a Sunday, I had to wait over until to- day. If it hadn’t been for that, you wouldn’t have caught up with me.”

“And how,” asked the sergeant mildly, “did you know that we were inquiring into this death, then? You say nobody’d be expecting him back until last night, and nobody’d panic at one extra night, would they? Or did somebody tip you off? Did you hear from somebody that his body’d been found?”

Lucien took his hands away from his drawn face, and stared him steadily in the eye. “No, how could I? I