The Sleeping Partner

  I took Kent up to the house with me, as he looked as if he needed exercise, and he bounded ahead in an ungainly gallop, his white tail dipping madly. He would have to be sold or given away. I felt upset at the thought of parting with him, but I certainly had no intention of going on living here alone. The Old Bull at Letherton would have to be my home for the next few months.

  The sky was still heavy but a more general grey than in central London, and the house was dark when I went in. There was a splay of letters, and I took them into the living-room to read them. There are few places more depressing than a house that‘s not being lived in, and I opened the french windows and stood on the top step looking out over the garden.

  Nothing in Lynn’s writing. A surtax demand I hadn’t expected, an account rendered for some provisions, the electricity bill, a postcard for Lynn from some people in the South of France, a letter for Lynn which after a moment’s hesitation I opened and found to be from the secretary of the local British Legion.

  That was the lot. She was evidently going to play out this farce to the bitter end.

  There was a flicker of lightning over the trees, and I waited for the rumble of thunder. It came at last, so distant that if I hadn’t been expecting it I might not have noticed it at all. I wondered what had happened to Kent and then heard him in the hall.

  The garden was getting in a mess. Smith had been ill; and then two days a week was not really enough at this time of year. The grass was long and going brown in patches. A downpour would do it all the good in the world.

  There was another flicker of lightning, even more unimpressive than the first, but the thunder was nearer. Remembering that Kent was inclined to be frightened by storms I went to find him.

  He wasn’t in the hall but in the short dark passage to the kitchen. Here a door led down to the cellar, and he was scratching at that. I wondered if he was trying to get away from the storm, so I opened the door and he immediately scuttled in.

  I went into the kitchen and wondered why kitchens always come to look neglected quicker than any other room in a house. The water in the sink usually accumulates enough to smell sour, and there’s always grease on the stove or stale crumbs somewhere. I was going into the larder, but heard Kent barking excitedly, the way he did when he was enjoying himself, so I went back to the cellar steps.

  There was only one main cellar really, a square room we used for junk, with two smaller places leading off, one for wine and one for coal. I switched on the light and went down.

  Everything down here, at least all the rubbish in this middle cellar, would be a legacy for the new owners. There wasn’t a thing of value – an old bedstead, some packing-cases, a table with a broken leg, spare rolls of wallpaper, some buckets and cleaning things. The bedstead we’d inherited. Kent was in the coal cellar, scratching at the anthracite, ears cocked and tail wagging in brief interested bursts. We hadn’t paid for the anthracite yet. We’d be getting an account rendered for that.

  Unfortunately, the only fight was the one in the main cellar, and it was shadowy and dark where he was scratching at the great pile. The small stuff was constantly rattling as he brought it rolling down. I saw he’d got something greyish white almost under his paws, but it seemed to be part of a longer thing becoming outlined as the coal rolled away.

  I said sharply: ‘Come away, Kent; come away! What the hell are you doing?’

  At the tone of my voice he stopped, head on one side, staring at me with his idiotic white face, then he yelped excitedly and went back to his scrabbling. Suddenly I kicked at him, and the tone of his yelping changed as he jumped away. The thing he had unearthed appeared to be a human hand and arm.

  Still uncertain, I went a step closer. It was the right shape but the wrong colour and was part of a dummy or something being a sort of red-brown in colour under the fine film of coal dust. I bent and caught hold of it to lift it out. The skin crinkled and pulled away under my fingers, and one enamelled red finger-nail came away in my grasp.

  I started back with a gulp that choked me. Doing so I thrust away a pile of anthracite with my boots and all the surface began to move. Like a black tide it rattled down, partly covering the hand and arm but revealing further up the face and head. It was almost unrecognisable, the skin copper-coloured like the arm, but with greenish blotches, the eyes black and sunk deep into the head, a stain of wet blood at the corner of the pinched and shrunken mouth. The flaxen hair stained and contaminated by coal, appeared to be coming out. But I had no difficulty in recognising that, nor the single turquoise earring in a darkly mottled ear.

  I had found Lynn at last.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I WAS on the kitchen floor. I didn’t know how long I’d been lying there. I remembered vaguely crawling on all fours nightmarish out of the dark pit, endless steps, with fright and sickness clutching at my bowels. The floor of the kitchen was stone, and my head lay just off the matting; the cold stone must have gradually brought me round.

  On hands and knees again, I tried to vomit several times, then got to the sink and was really sick. I turned on the cold tap and shoved my trembling hands under it and splashed the water over my head and neck. After a bit the awful throbbing in my throat seemed to quieten, the blood to go out of my eyes. I straightened up and lurched sweatily out of the kitchen, past the hole from Hell, across the hall, reached the drawing-room. The trench windows were still open, and another flicker of lightning moved behind the trees.

  I got as far as the desk where the drink was kept and took out brandy, couldn’t see a glass, gulped three or four times at the bottle. The spirit went down hotly, was met first by another violent urge to be sick, but I flopped in a chair, fought it and fought it.

  I lay there for a long time meeting the horror that kept getting at me. I was now just one step away from complete break up, but I couldn’t get any further.

  It was a queer light in the room, not dark but not anything else, a false twilight because of the thunderclouds. There was still really a couple of hours of day left, but I couldn’t shake free from the idea that the light was fading. I knew I couldn’t be alone there in the dark. I kept rubbing my fingers up and down on the settee to get the feel of her off them.

  Then I saw the telephone at my elbow. I lifted it off. We weren’t on a dialling system and I could hear the thing buzzing at the other end. They were a long time; just too long. The exchange girl said: ‘Number, please,’ but abruptly I put the phone back.

  Because I had remembered Kent.

  I took another gulp of brandy, gathering my strength. Then I got up and lurched back into the hall. It was darker here and less far from the cellar.

  ‘Kent!’ I shouted.

  I thought my voice echoed as if the house was empty of furniture, as if it was empty of everything except my wife and the smell of her. I licked my lips and shouted again. Then he answered in a queer excited half-whine, half-bark from the cellar.

  I got myself somehow to go step by step to the door. The light was still on but I couldn’t see him down there. For a minute I just hadn’t the guts to shout again because I thought if I did perhaps Lynn would get up, shaking the coal dust off her.

  I went down a step. ‘Kent!’

  He barked but didn’t appear. A few bits of anthracite rattled.

  Then I lost my head and my temper. ‘Kent, you damned bloody fool!’ I screamed ‘Come out!’ I listened to my voice as if it was someone else’s and marvelled that it should be so hysterical. I cursed at him and swore. Then I turned to go. I must get help of some sort. To hell with the dog. I must get the police. That first impulse had been the right one.

  But they might be ages coming. I couldn’t leave him down there, with her, pulling at the coal and making his idiot whining. Besides I didn’t know what he might be doing. I went down two more steps. From here I could just see the edge of the coal. I couldn’t go any further, not if my soul depended on it. I whispered ‘Kent!’ and suddenly he came, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling,
grinning at me as if proud of his find, and then turned to go back to it. I fell down four more steps, grabbed at his collar, missed, clutched his haunches; my sweaty fingers slipped, I caught his tail, hauled him back, got at last a grip on his collar, trying not to look, trying not to see into the coal cellar; I turned and hauled him choking to the top of the steps. He was a heavy dog but I lifted him as if he was nothing. But I’d seen it again, out of the corner of my eye. I flung him slithering into the kitchen and slammed shut the cellar door and lay back against it, sweat running down me like rain. Then before he could come out I slammed the kitchen door also and knew he was safe.

  As I stood there taking deep breaths, trying to steady up, the telephone in the drawing-room rang.

  I got across to it, took another gulp of brandy, picked it up.

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Mr Granville?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, this is Frank Dawson. A bit of luck catching you, Mike. I thought I’d try the number to see if you were there.’

  ‘Yes.’ Tell him? Ask him to get help?

  ‘I thought you’d want to know the latest about the works dispute. Piper has called a strike for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘I say Piper has called a strike for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think Read has mismanaged the thing from the start, don’t you?’

  Lynn’s dead, Frank, I would say. I’ve just found her. Somebody’s killed her. No, in this house, in the cellar. And I took her hand, Frank. The wedding ring was on it …

  ‘Of course, Gill is shop steward, and it’s not Piper’s place to take the lead, but he seems to be one of those men who can get away with it. I told you I was going back to Wales in me morning, didn’t I?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ What, Lynn dead? Are you joking, man? When? Where? Incredulous, he would be; incredulous, suspicious, staring.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I say, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes … I’m …’

  ‘I thought you sounded a bit queer. Is Lynn at home?’

  Is she at home? Yes, come over, Frank, and meet her. I said: ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I just thought I’d like to hear the sound of her voice.’

  I glanced round, thinking I heard the sound of her voice. ‘No, she’s not at home.’

  And then he rang off. The chance was gone. I suddenly felt that by saying nothing to him I’d done something not revokable. Yet far better to get help direct. Handle this on my own. Fumble a cigarette out of the box on the table and light it. Take up the telephone again.

  And then again I put it back. Perhaps there had been something un-revokable within my own mind in not telling Frank Dawson. At least the thought of Frank, incredulous, unbelieving … Other people would be just as incredulous, just as likely to see this, inconveniently, through their own eyes, not through mine. Among them the police. What would you think if you were a policeman? Go slow.

  One of the french windows started to swing, and I jumped in the chair as if I’d been shot. I thought someone was shutting me in. But it was only a stray breeze.

  I knew I’d got to think, and think more clearly than ever before in my life. But not in this house. I couldn’t stay in here because if I did, not one straight thought would come. You couldn’t while that lay in the coal cellar. I could still follow first impulses, ring for the police or for help of some sort. I knew it was best to do that. But I couldn’t for the moment reason out the follow-on of making that move – or the consequences of not making it.

  I went out of the french windows, down the steps into the garden. I got well away at the end of the lawn, flopped on a tree stump.

  Lynn had been dead some time, and someone had killed her. People don’t die, get themselves buried under anthracite.

  But who? I was her husband. We’d not been getting on. She’d decided to divorce me, had cited another woman; I’d been furious, resentful at the idea of a divorce, had wanted to stop it. She’d refused; we’d quarrelled violently.

  That was the lay-out. I tapped the end of the cigarette and tried to keep it still. It wouldn’t keep still I held it up and looked at it. It wouldn’t keep still.

  A car went past on the road that Lynn had used on the Friday night when she’d come back to fetch something. I’d run across this grass after her then, through the trees. She’d lost one earring. Three weeks ago tomorrow. Why had she come back that night and when had she come back for the last time?

  Who had last seen her? On the Saturday or Sunday after leaving me she’d replied to the bank’s letter. Much later, nearly a week later than that, Ray French’s postcard. Miss Lord had had the rent of her flat only six days ago.

  But she hadn’t seen her. She said Lynn had come too late. For that matter, neither had Ray, and the postcard had given wrong information.

  I looked back at the house; it was dark and square-shouldered and baleful against the trees and the sky. Out here was some kind of sanity and safety. But whatever I thought up, I had to go in once more – either to phone the police or to fetch Kent and lock the door. A spot of rain was cold on my hand.

  I swallowed; saliva was all the time gathering in my mouth, and three or four times I had spat it out. I needed more brandy, but that too was in the house. Not the courage to go back yet. Another cigarette.

  Steady, think it over. Don’t rush into a primary error. It could be as big a bloomer not to call the police as to call them, probably much greater. I didn’t know. I’d got to know. A flash of lightning lit the sky, and I waited for the thunder. This time it never came.

  It wasn’t really any use trying to reason clearly even out here. Every now and then I’d think things were beginning to settle; but all the time I was doing it with the lid off. Nothing solidified, took shape. Nothing could.

  The rain came faster. Must go back to the house. At this moment I had one advantage over everyone else. I only – apart from the murderer – knew I hadn’t killed my wife. If the police were called in they’d automatically make me chief suspect. Could I turn this advantage to any gain before I reported the body? I thought, if I don’t tell the police, can I go about the ordinary business of living, without people knowing what I’ve seen – even for a few hours?

  How did murderers manage to do it as if nothing were the matter? Did they have some inner skin to the mind which stopped them from remembering?

  Reason it out. Lynn had been dead some time. At first the sight of the wet blood had deceived me, but common sense insisted … Who then went to her flat in Grosvenor Court Mews late at night? Today was Thursday. Someone came on Thursday late to pay the rent. Presumably they slipped the money in an envelope into Miss Lord’s letter-box. Something of that sort, to avoid a meeting or a cheque. How could anyone risk going to the flat unless they knew Lynn was dead?

  I went back to the house.

  Kent was quiet now. Nothing stirred or moved. I went upstairs. It was queer, the feeling, as if going away from the doors of the house was moving away from safety. If Something followed up the stairs the retreat was cut off. I went into our bedroom. Although it wasn’t really dark in here I put on the light. I went over to her dressing-table and began to search through the drawers.

  The scent she used came from her things, and suddenly I had to stop because I found tears running down my face. Perhaps it was weak and shameful being like that, but the scent brought up all sorts of memories; it had been a part of the early days of our marriage in London with all the physical companionship of the long nights, the shared excitement, the comradeship, the sense of heightened living.

  I sat there miserably for a time, not able to go on. And as I sat there my feeling for the thing in the cellar changed. I was still scared of it, in an illogical instinctive way, but a lot of the fear had given way to pity and anger. No doubt it was true that Lynn hadn’t much liking for me before the end; bu
t that didn’t change what I felt and had felt about her. She was my wife, and someone had murdered her and dragged her down into the cellar, and left her alone in the dark and the dirt and the ignominy.

  Kent was barking now, and with a sudden lurch of fear I went out to the landing window and peered down the drive. There was no one about. I went back to the bedroom.

  A few old bills, two theatre programmes, a list of Festival Hall concerts, underclothes, handkerchiefs, shoes, folding coat-hangers, needles and silk cotton, an old handbag quite empty. Lynn had been a great spender, and there were about two dozen frocks hanging in the wardrobe. I should have realised she wouldn’t have left so many of her things behind.

  I began to feel in the pockets of her day dresses, and immediately came on a note that was a shock. It was on a piece of the firm’s notepaper and simply said: ‘My dear Lynn, Shall be delighted to see you Wednesday. Do ring me if you want to make it earlier, Frank.’ The other thing I found, in an inner pocket of her Burberry, was a Yale key. That might not have meant anything except for the label tied on which said ‘9a’.

  I took Kent back to Mrs Lloyd’s, told her I’d see about getting him moved as soon as I could. I don’t know if I still looked queer; anyway she always peered at you as if she thought you’d been up to something.

  I drove shakily back into London. By the time I got there it was nearly half-past ten. I still felt sick; it kept coming in fresh waves every few minutes like when you have food poisoning. I went into a snack bar and drank two cups of black strong coffee and swallowed a few mouthfuls of a plate of bacon and eggs. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten.

  Nobody here in London had changed as I had changed. The girl who served me had the mark of an old gland operation on her neck. ‘Scrambled egg and mixed grill, two teas. Well, they say they’re invisible but it all depends who’s looking, don’t it? Three cheese and tomato. Milk shake.’ There were sweat stains on the other girl’s overall. ‘ Two fish and chips. It don’t seem decent, not ever to be left alone.’ She sniggered. ‘ Makes you think. Sorry, sir, no poached eggs; scrambled or fried …’