The Riddle of the River (28 page)

Once I perceived something like a delivery cart moving along ahead of me, and once I heard something coming up the road behind me. I dismounted in a tumble, and stood waiting silently and tensely at the side of the road until the vehicle had passed far enough ahead to pose no further risk of collision. Then I sprang back onto the machine and pedalled swiftly onwards.

I stopped the bicycle just before turning into Petty Cury, half-fell off it, leant it silently against a wall, and stood still, listening and peering down the street as best I could. I perceived neither sound nor movement at first, and began to
wonder if I had made a mistake by coming here. Then I became aware of muffled noises. Quickly and silently, I crept towards them.

As I approached Heffers, I realised that the sounds were actually proceeding from across the street, in the narrow alley separating two neighbouring buildings where I had waited and watched secretly just yesterday. Confused grunts were interrupted by a whispered imprecation, and diverse sounds of a struggle could be heard, as well as heavy breathing. I hastened to the opening, pulled out my box of matches and struck one.

In its momentary flash and glare, I made out three human figures cramped in the tiny space. Two were stretched full length upon the ground. The flame illuminated Jenny’s body as she lay unconscious, a dark mark across her throat, while a figure whom I identified as none other than my very own husband was kneeling on the back of a man lying on his stomach, his body half over hers. Arthur had planted his knee in the small of the man’s back and was pressing him down by the shoulders, while the man was struggling violently. At the flash of light from my match, Arthur looked around, and Julian Archer took advantage of his second of inattention to writhe violently foward, throwing Arthur off balance.

‘Be careful!’ I cried, stepping forward.

The match burnt my fingers and I dropped it and reached for another, which I lit in time to see Julian struggling away from Arthur’s grasp, reaching out his arm, stretching it out to its full length, away from me, towards Jenny’s head which lay beyond him – no, not towards her head, but next to her head. I held the match out over him and perceived a metallic gleam.

‘The knife!’ I screamed. Arthur lunged, and grasped Julian’s
arm, pulling it back. They struggled for a few long seconds, Julian gaining inches towards the knife, which I had suddenly and incongruously recognised as one of our very own best kitchen knives, much approved of by Mrs Widge. It lay well out of Arthur’s reach, but only just beyond Julian’s fingers. If he once grasped it, death lay in his hands.

I dropped the match, hurled myself over the two of them, a tangle of bodies and arms and legs, landing in a completely disorganised heap on the other side. Julian Archer swore as my skirts covered his head, Jenny’s body and the knife. But I disentangled my arm and and felt for the blade in the darkness, where I thought I had seen it. His fingers reached it just as mine did, and I snatched it out of his reach and scrambled back. Then I lit another match.

He looked up at me, recognised me and unexpectedly burst into a short, barking laugh.

‘Why, Miss Duncan,’ he said, ‘you here, joining this little party? At such an original hour, too. What might you be doing here, I wonder? Joining in the attack, perhaps? This lady here rang at the bell, woke up my servant and had me called out of the house, then pulled me in here and tried to stab me! Just as I was fending her off, this other ruffian came and jumped on me from behind. I thought it was some kind of robbery. Can you be connected with it all? What on earth is going on here?’

‘He was strangling her,’ said Arthur quickly.

‘Nonsense, man – she was trying to stab me, the vixen! I was just holding her off!’

‘We need the police,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ said Julian Archer quickly, and I heard his smile preserved in his voice as the match once again flickered out,
leaving us in darkness. ‘There’s no need for the police now. This woman has not been badly hurt, I hardly touched her. If this person could just get off my back, we can have a look at her and set her back on her feet, and then perhaps we can all be on our way without any further disturbance.’

I struck another match. Arthur looked at me questioningly. I looked back at him, willing him to remain where he was.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We must summon the police at once.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Archer with a show of annoyance, ‘I must say that I don’t see how you’re going to manage to get them here. I intend to shake off this fellow and get up; I’ve had quite enough of the dust, thank you very much.’

‘Don’t get up,’ I said, and grasped the knife threateningly.

‘My dear girl, that knife in your dainty little hand doesn’t frighten me in the least! A little bluff, a little feminine drama; it makes me laugh! Go on then, get the police, if you can manage it without going anywhere!’ And he attempted to roll over, but Arthur made himself heavy, and because of the extreme narrowness of the alley, he could not escape to one side or another.

I well knew that I would be utterly incapable of stabbing him, yet his words provoked me to an indiscretion.

‘Oh,’ I said coldly, ‘I can get the police here very quickly without going anywhere. I could do it quietly, if I had a nice little
wireless machine
. But as I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll have to be a bit noisy about it.’

His eyes swung to my face, his jaw dropped. I believe he truly understood only at that moment what was at stake. It might have been safer to keep him in ignorance – but his reaction nailed the lid to my certainty. Fixing my eyes on his
face, I inhaled deeply and forced myself to produce an extremely long, loud scream.

It was not an easy thing to do, in that dark city street, at that dark hour. If one has never tried it, one cannot know that it is necessary to overcome an immense, almost overwhelming inhibition. In fact, in order to do it at all, one must gigantically overdo it. My scream turned into a wild, primeval, unstoppable ululation.

‘Poliiiiiiiiiiiiiiice! Heeelp!!!!! Poliiiiiiiiice!!! Murder!!!!!!!’ I shouted and screeched into the darkness.

Lights flickered on in windows up and down the street. Some of the windows opened, and heads peered out.

‘Help! Call the police! Murder!’ I shouted again and again.

A man wearing a nightcap on his head emerged from one of the nearest houses, carrying a candlestick in one hand and a weapon of some kind in the other. I saw him start towards the sound of my voice; then he was overtaken by a horse and cart which came clopping up the street and pulled to a stop just in front of Heffers. Totally ignoring the man with the candlestick, the lights and heads at the windows, and my continuing cries, an elderly man climbed down from the cart, slowly extracted a key from his pocket, and proceeded to fit it into the door of the bookshop.

Startled, my attention was momentarily distracted by this man, and I missed Julian Archer’s swift movement. With one violent lunge, he freed his arm from Arthur’s grasp and snatched the knife out of mine. Then he was on his feet facing Arthur.

‘Get out into the street,’ he snapped. Arthur moved back three or four steps, and Julian followed him, threateningly. By now two or three people had congregated at the entrance to
the little alley; we heard them gasp as they saw him emerge, the knife in his hand.

I stood up to follow, then stooped down and quickly laid my hand on Jenny’s breast. She was breathing; her eyes fluttered as I touched her. I left her there and followed Julian onto the street.

‘It’s all right,’ Mr Archer was saying tranquilly to the shocked, startled neighbours. ‘I was attacked by the crazy woman in there, but I managed to seize her weapon and all is well.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Mr Archer, sir?’ asked the man with the candlestick, and I realised that obviously all these people were his neighbours; they were well acquainted with him and would certainly take his part rather than ours.

‘Quite all right,’ replied Mr Archer calmly. ‘I’m not sure why this gentleman attacked me; I thought he was together with the woman, but I suppose he just saw me defending myself and leapt on me, believing I was harming her. Quite understandable, I’m sure, and I’m very sorry we conflicted,’ he added, lowering the knife and stretching out his hand to shake Arthur’s.

‘No!’ I cried, hurrying forwards. Arthur’s steady gaze met mine, then Mr Archer’s, and he did not lift his hand. Mr Archer drew his own back, and turned to stare at me inimically.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he snarled in a low voice.

Ignoring him, I crossed the road and addressed myself directly to the delivery man, who was now engaged in stolidly removing labelled and addressed crates of books from the interior of the shop and loading them onto his cart.

‘Do you come here every morning at this time?’ I asked him.

‘No miss,’ he replied, attending calmly to his work as though it was perfectly normal to be surrounded by people wearing caps and nightgowns at four o’clock in the morning. ‘Only Mondays and Thursdays or when I’m asked for special.’

Ivy’s corpse –
the dark box
. It was all so devastatingly plain; Ivy’s strangled corpse had been placed into a crate, casually prepared beforehand by the manager in the interior of the shop and placed amongst a number of other crates ready for delivery, surprising no one…and all picked up and taken away by a man with a cart, early, early on the Wednesday morning, when the usual delivery man would not be there. This one would be a different man; no other than Mr Archer senior, I could no longer doubt it; Mr Archer senior dressed in a working man’s overalls and cap after bidding goodbye to his elegant guests…driving slowly into the centre of town with his gardener’s cart and pony, lifting and packing the crates, taking away the corpse in full view of any chance nocturnal passers-by without arousing the slightest suspicion, while his son rested peacefully in his camp bed upstairs, enjoying his perfectly organised alibi. Delivering the boxes, and above all, the last one – delivering it first, when no one would be walking through the Lammas Land for pleasure; driving straight there and emptying the contents of the box into the river, then clopping calmly away to the next place. Completing the other deliveries, if there were any, then returning home and burning the unwanted crate on the refuse heap at leisure. Just an old crate of books from the shop.

The dark box! The bride, the bride will never see the church!

Had it been Ivy’s voice, then, that I had heard? Can such things ever have any rational explanation?

I turned and looked at Julian Archer. He was staring at me, shaken by my question to the driver, following my mention of the wireless. His mouth was twisted strangely and his lips were dry. He moved towards me and I felt danger approach as thick as electricity in the air of a storm. Yet surely he would not stab me in front of all these people – would he? How strange to stand watching, wondering, as though someone else’s life was at stake. He was approaching me, his face was leaning into mine.

‘Just who are you and what do you want?’ he whispered.

Arthur came up beside me and took my hand in his.

‘This is my wife,’ he replied, addressing Julian, but speaking clearly enough to be heard perfectly by the assembled group of neighbours. ‘And I believe that she is preparing to level a grave accusation against you. You would do well to listen.’

Julian’s glance shifted rapidly to Arthur and then back to me. As he realised that the situation was more complex than it had seemed, his sense of his own danger increased, and from being defensive he became aggressive.

‘You poor sod,’ he said, ‘if you knew what your wife does when you’re not there to see.’

‘I do know,’ replied Arthur coldly. ‘She makes a practice of detecting criminal activities.’

His words confirmed what the murderer had already begun to understand. A hunted look flashed across his face; for a moment I feared he might run away, and wondered if the neighbours would give chase if he did. I wanted to keep him there, just a few minutes, just a minute longer.

‘My husband is quite right,’ I said steadily, capturing his eyes with mine to hold him.

‘You just be careful what you say,’ he said, his lips curling back. ‘People like you are easy victims. Easy. You know that, don’t you?’

The threat was spoken low, but it was overhead – by Jenny, who had come to her senses and now flung herself suddenly out into the street. Her dark hair seemed lit around the edges by the flicker of the candles held by the people standing behind her. Ignoring them, she approached him and pointed a finger directly at his chest.

‘You rotten criminal,’ she said, causing him to jump and turn around suddenly, ‘you pimp, you murderer, I’ll get you yet!’

The gathered neighbours drew in their breath in a collective gasp of shock.

‘This woman is a slut; she’s raving,’ cried Julian Archer.

‘Yes, I’m a slut,’ she shouted. ‘I’m a slut, and who made me one? Who makes sluts of girls like me? Men like you, who take our money and keep us down in the filth while they get rich! Yes, that’s what he does,’ she went on, her voice rising, and she turned towards the onlookers and advanced towards them, thrusting out her chest so as to provide them with the full benefit of her shocking manners and appearance. And indeed, her height, her pose, her loud voice and her dark, tangled hair, her wild face, her torn clothing and the bruise on her throat caused the white-clad group to shrink back from her with hushed horror.

‘Go away,’ said a bearded man harshly. ‘We don’t want women like you here, with your shrieks and your hysteria and your lies and your immoral habits. We don’t know what
you’re doing here and we don’t want to. Go back to wherever you came from!’ He gave her a sharp push. She shrieked.

At that moment came a sound I had been hoping and waiting for, a sound which was music to my ears.

‘Now, now, what’s all this?’ said a strong, authoritative voice, and a police officer came loping up the street. ‘I heard screaming down this way just a couple of minutes ago. Was that from here? Who screamed? Just what is going on here?’