Where Human Pathways End Read online

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt, Miss Reeve. I’ll look in again later.’

  ‘Oh, do come in, Mr Waley. We’re almost ready for bed.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your accident this afternoon.’

  ‘It was such a silly thing, really. I caught my foot in a slip-noose of bramble. It was as if somebody had set it on the path on purpose, only that would be too ridiculous for words. But it was a shock—and I tore myself painfully, trying to get free.’

  There was still the ghost of that panic, Roger noticed, in Miss Reeve’s pasty, pudgy features, and in the signalling behind the round lenses of her spectacles. ‘It’s not a very nice path for a walk,’ she added, ‘but one can’t keep Jane away from the lake.’

  ‘I’m having all the undergrowth cleared away from the banks,’ said Roger; ‘that should make it easier walking.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be ever so much nicer, Mr Waley.’

  ‘Florinda won’t like it,’ thought Jane, sitting stiffly in her wicker chair by the fire. ‘She won’t like it at all. She’ll be in a wicked temper will Florinda.’ But she said aloud in a voice of small protest—for what was the use of speaking about Florinda to grown-ups?—‘It won’t be nice at all. It will be quite horribly beastly.’

  The men didn’t care for the work they had been set to do. It was the skeletons, they said—and they prodded suspiciously with their implements at the little lumps of bone and feather and fur that their cutting and scything had revealed. There was a killer somewhere in the woods; owls said one, stoats said another, but old Renshawe said glumly it was neither bird nor beast, that it was Something-that-walked-that-shouldn’t, and this infected the others with a derisive disquiet. All the same, fifty yards of path were cleared during the morning, which took them beyond the small Doric pavilion that once served as boathouse and was reflected by a stone twin housing the loch mechanism on the eastern side of the lake.

  Miss Reeve took Jane out in the afternoon to watch the men’s progress. Jane ran ahead down the cleared path; paused at the pavilion to hang over the flaking balustrade and gaze down into the water: whispered something, shook her head, and ran on.

  ‘Hullo, Mr Renshawe—alone?’ she cried, as rounding a sudden twist in the path she came upon the old man hacking at the undergrowth. Renshawe started and cut short, and the blade bit into his foot. This accident stopped work for the day.

  ‘It wasn’t right, Miss Jane, to come on me like that,’ he said, as they were helping him up to the house. ‘You give me a real turn. I thought——’

  ‘I know,’ said Jane, fixing him with her serious, puzzled eyes. ‘And she was there, too, watching all the time.’

  Whatever the killer was, it moved its hunting-ground that night. Two White Orpingtons were found dead beside the arks next morning, their feathers scattered like snow over the bare ground.

  ‘And it’s not an animal, neither,’ said Ron, the boy who carried the mash into the runs and had discovered the kill.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s not an animal?’ asked Wakefield.

  ‘I mean that their necks is wrung, Mr Wakefield.

  ‘Oh, get away!’ said Wakefield.

  But the following morning another hen was found lying in a mess of feathers and blood, and Wakefield reported to his master.

  ‘It can’t be it’s a fox, sir. That head’s not been bitten off. It’s been pulled off, sir. . . . And there was this, sir, was found by the arks.’ It was a child’s bracelet of blackened silver.

  The path was cleared, but on the farther side of the lake the shrubberies that melted imperceptibly into the tall woods bordered it closely. Here Jane dawdled on her afternoon walk. At the bend in the path near the boathouse she waited until her governess was out of sight—and then called softly into the gloom of yew and rhododendron and laurel, ‘I think you’re a beast, a beast! And I’m not going to be your friend any more, d’you hear? And you’re not to come on Christmas Eve, even if you’re starving.’

  There was movement in the shadows, and she glimpsed the staring blue eyes and pinched face and the tattered satin finery. ‘And it’s no use following us, so there!’ Jane stuck her tongue out as a gesture of defiance, and ran away along the path.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Miss Reeve, who had turned back to look for her. ‘I thought I heard someone crying.’

  ‘Oh, it’s only Florinda,’ said Jane, ‘and she can sob her eyes out now for all I care.’

  ‘Jane,’ said Miss Reeve severely, ‘how many more times have I to tell you Florinda is a naughty fib, and we shouldn’t tell naughty fibs even in fun?’

  ‘It’s no fun,’ said Jane, so low that Miss Reeve could hardly catch a word, ‘no fun at all being Florinda.’

  A hard frost set in overnight. It made a moon landscape of the park and woods, and engraved on the nursery window-panes, sharply as with a diamond, intricate traceries of silver fern. The bark of the trees was patterned with frost like chain-mail, and from the gaunt branches icicle daggers glinted in the sun. Each twig of the bare shrubs had budded its tear-drops of ice. The surface of the lake was wrinkled and grey like the face of an old woman. ‘And Wakefield says if it keeps up we may be able to skate on it on Boxing Day. . . .’ But by midday the temperature rose and all out-of-doors was filled with a mournful pattering and dripping.

  Towards evening a dirty yellow glow showed in the sky, and furry black clouds moved up over the woods, bringing snow. It snowed after that for two days, and then it was Christmas Eve.

  ‘You look like the Snow Queen, but you smell like the Queen of Sheba. Must you go out tonight, Mummy?’

  ‘Darling, it’s a bore. We promised Lady Graves, so we have to.’

  ‘You should have kept your fingers crossed. But you’ll be back soon?’

  ‘In time to catch Father Christmas climbing down the chimneys, I expect.’

  ‘But earlier than that—promise . . . ?’

  ‘Much earlier than that. Daddy wants to get back early, anyway. He and Wakefield had a tiring night sitting up with a gun to guard their precious hens. . . .’

  ‘But she . . . it never came, did it?’

  ‘Not last night. And now you go to lovely sleeps, and when you wake perhaps Father Christmas will have brought you Florinda in his——’

  ‘No,’ cried the child, ‘not Florinda, Mummy, please.’

  ‘What a funny thing you are,’ said Clare, stooping to kiss her; ‘you were quite silly about her a few days ago. . . .’

  Jane shivered and snuggled down in the warm bed.

  ‘I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘We’re not friends any more.’

  After the lights were out, Jane imagined she was walking in the snow. The snowflakes fell as lightly as kisses, and soon they had covered her with a white, soft down. Now she knew herself to be a swan, and she tucked her head under a wing and so fell asleep on the dark rocking water.

  But in the next room Miss Reeve, who had gone to bed early, could not sleep because of the wind that sobbed so disquietingly around the angles of the house. At last she put out a hand to the bedside table, poured herself water, groped for the aspirin bottle, and swallowed down three tablets at a gulp. It was as she rescrewed the top, she noticed that it was not the aspirin bottle she was holding. She could have sworn that the sleeping-tablets had been in her dressing-table drawer. Her first thought was that someone had changed the bottles on purpose, but that, she told herself, would be too absurd. There was nothing she could do about it. The crying of the wind mounted to shrill broken fluting that sounded oddly like children’s laughter.

  The first thing they noticed when the car drew up, its chained tyres grinding and clanking under the dark porch, was that the front door was ajar. ‘Wait here,’ said Roger to the chauffeur, ‘there seems to have been visitors while we were away.’

  Clare switched on the drawing-room lights, and screamed at the demoniac havoc they revealed, the chairs and tables overturned, the carpet a litter of broken porcelain, feathers from the torn cushi
ons, and melting snow. Someone had thrown the heavy silver inkwell at the wall glass, which hung askew, its surface cracked and starred, and the delicate frame broken.

  ‘No sane person——’ Roger began.

  But already Clare was running up the stairs to the nursery and screaming, ‘Jane! . . . Jane!’ as she ran.

  The nursery was wrecked, too—the sheets clawed in strips, the floor a drift of feathers from the ripped pillows. Only the doll Arabella, with a shattered head, was propped up in the empty bed. When Clare touched her she fell backwards and began to repeat, ‘Good night, Mamma!’ as the mechanism inside her worked.

  They found Jane’s footsteps in the snow, leading over the lawn in the direction of the lake. Once they thought they saw her ahead of them, but it was only the snowman Roger had helped her to build during the afternoon. There was a misty moon, and by its light they followed the small naked footprints to the edge of the lake—but their eyes could make out nothing beyond the snow-fringed ice.

  Roger had sent on the chauffeur to a bend in the drive where the car headlights could illuminate the farther bank. And now, in the sudden glare, they saw in the dark centre of ice the two small figures, Jane in her night-dress, and beside her a little girl in old-fashioned blue satin who walked oddly and jerkily, lifting her feet and stamping them on the ice.

  They called together, ‘Jane! . . . Jane! Come back!’

  She seemed to have heard, and she turned, groping towards the light. The other caught at her arm, and the two struggled together on the black, glassy surface. Then from the stars it seemed, and into their cold hearts, fell a sound like the snapping of a giant lute-string. The two tiny interlocked figures had disappeared, and the ice moaned and tinkled at the edges of the lake.

  Mr Nicholas Loses Grip

  MR NICHOLAS WAS perhaps the most urbane young man I have ever met. Not that he was particularly young; but he carried off to perfection that pose of sad worldly wisdom which is tolerable only in the very young. Among the gross, the petulant, and the self-indulgent who made up the bulk of Roy Southend’s guests he passed for young. He was never pompous or boring—but he suffered fools with a sort of grave courtesy which made them surpass themselves in platitude. He seldom raised his voice—and this made his final outburst the more memorable.

  It was strange, I used to think, how so quiet and self-effacing a person should yet make such an impression on that loud-voiced and self-important crew. They did not exactly respect him—but his opinions got about. ‘That fellow Nicholas told me . . .’, ‘Young Nicholas was saying last night . . .’, ‘Nicky tips Amalgamated Utilities for a three point rise . . .’: it was noticeable how often his name recurred in the talk at Purlingford.

  I don’t know how Nicholas got into Roy’s set. I had heard he was one of Lady Palter’s discoveries—and it wouldn’t surprise me. She collected attractive young men from the unlikeliest places as racing men collect new punting systems, and she discarded them just as swiftly. Anyway, I was given to understand that Agatha had a feeling for him (Oh, those ‘feelings’ among the highly varnished women of the Purlingford weekend! Whenever I heard the word I thought by an obvious mental association of the waving of antennae—for they were cold-blooded and voracious as insects, those women, and their ‘feelings’ as short lived).

  At first certainly it was with the women that Nicholas was a success. He was so ready to please, so enchantingly flattering, so intelligent and discreet; above all he was patient. In a man’s country these qualities are often ignored, but they are seldom despised: Nicholas’s influence on the women was remarked with a certain wry respect at Purlingford.

  I did not learn until the end from what country he came. Poor Toby Palter, that plethoric Viscount, used to say the fellow was Russian; but it is characteristic of Toby to denounce all that he dislikes as ‘Russian’—and he had no reason to care for Mr Nicholas.

  Even Roy himself was uncertain of Mr Nicholas’s nationality, but he had several ideas on the subject, of course.

  ‘Between you and me’—Roy always gestured with his cigar at the phrase as if he would wind us in a cocoon of opulent smoke—‘Between you and me, I’m positive he’s a Hapsburg. The lower lip, Danchester. It’s unmistakable. They say he was mixed up in some sort of palace revolution and had to go into exile. You can take it from me Nicholas isn’t his real name.’

  But Roy is the sort of great man who never remembers what he said yesterday unless his secretary was there to make a note of it. (This accounts for the bewildering changes of policy on the Daily Extreme—never more bewildering than after a change of secretary.) At various times throughout the next month Roy assured me that Nicholas was a Wittelsbach, a Hohenzollern, a lineal descendant of Buonaparte, a Romanoff, a Bourbon, and a natural son of Lenin.

  I remember well my first meeting with Nicholas. The funny thing about it was that it didn’t feel like a first meeting. I seemed to have known him all my life.

  ‘Haven’t we met before?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve seen you about,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘You remind me of someone. I can’t think who.’

  ‘You used to run into me at Harriet Vail’s parties, I expect.’

  Harriet had died twenty years ago. I did some generous mental arithmetic and worked out that Mr Nicholas could not be so young as he seemed. Also I changed the subject. My relationship with Harriet was not a thing of which I am especially proud: I had no wish to have it exhumed at Purlingford.

  In speaking about Nicholas with others, I have learnt that most people at their first meeting with him experienced the same faint sense of exasperation and discomfort. It was something rather more than the proverbial awkwardness of the Englishman in encountering a too suave foreigner. But one could not retain such feelings for long in the company of Mr Nicholas: he specialised in putting his acquaintances at their ease.

  I deny that I was ever friendly with the fellow. We got along together. We had to anyway—because Roy made him a director and he sat beside me at policy meetings.

  ‘Take it from me, Danchester, young Nicholas will pull his weight on the Board. He knows everybody . . .’

  ‘Yes, they tell me he’s been seen leaving No. 10 arm-in-arm with the Prime Minister.’

  At least I did my best to keep Nicholas out of the Daily Extreme. Roy is not fond of the Prime Minister. But he was under a spell that day:

  ‘Exactly, Danchester! That proves my point. Nicholas is a thoroughly good “mixer”. We need his type with the Extreme.’

  And the cigar smoke eddied about us, crept like a blue ghost out of the tall French windows, and dissolved on the Surrey Hills. I once heard a Cabinet Minister describe the view from these windows at Purlingford as the loveliest in England: he, like myself, was on Roy’s staff.

  I must say that so far as the circulation figures showed, Nicholas’s inclusion on the Policy Board was justified. He was not assertive at our meetings; but he let slip now and again suggestions which fired Roy’s imagination, and which, vastly amplified and distorted, found their way to the breakfast tables of our several million readers. The agitation for legal reform on the questions of euthanasia and abortion, the movement for quicker and easier divorce, the proposals for state controlled A.I.D. as a counter balance to a sinking birth-rate, our support of the Atom By-Products Scheme, were all hatched from the mind of Mr Nicholas. It was he too who proposed running ‘I had a Soft Spot for Sadie’ in the Sunday Extreme—a feature which increased the circulation of the paper by three quarters of a million in the second week.

  Despite his success, or because of it, there were several of us on the Board who could not like him. Simon St Cross and I led the opposition when opportunity arose—but we had to be tactful about it. In Roy’s eyes Nicholas could do no wrong.

  Roy had the dictator’s habit of summoning emergency meetings at the oddest times. It was with no surprise then that one evening I received a telephone call as I was leaving the office ordering me to report at once to Purlingford
for a conference.

  I was the first to arrive, and found Roy being bled by a very antiseptic blonde nurse. Roy was bled regularly once a month: he called it ‘donating plasma’, and he sent directives to his staff exhorting them to adopt a habit which was at once beneficial to the community and to the health of the donor.

  With his free arm Roy gestured me to draw up a chair near him.

  ‘A pint this evening, Danchester. You look as if you could afford one, too. Susie will draw it off in no time.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I said. But I knew it was hopeless to contend with Roy. He and Susie between them would have my blood. ‘I feel a bit anaemic tonight.’

  ‘Just the thing for you. You’ll feel a different man once Sue’s let some of the alcohol out of you . . .’

  I took off my jacket and bared my arm. The blonde fussed some minutes with her bottles, dabbed prettily at Roy’s flabby and hirsute biceps, attached a light dressing with a ‘There, Lord Southend, nice and comfy now, mm?’ and turned her vampire attentions on me.

  ‘Emergency meeting?’ I said, gritting my teeth and grimacing at the reek of ether as Susie cleaned up a patch of flesh before starting operations. ‘Or did you bring me here to take my blood?’

  Roy lit up a cigar before replying.

  ‘Between you and me, Danchester, we’re on to a very big thing. The others should be here in time for dinner . . . Nicholas is flying from the Continent . . . You should give it an extra twist or two, Susie . . . A very big thing indeed, Danchester.’

  ‘Another of Nicholas’s bright schemes?’

  ‘His biggest yet. Take it from me, that boy is going to go very far. . . .’

  ‘I wish sometimes he would.’

  ‘Danchester, I shouldn’t like to think that you mean that. On the Extreme I’m glad to say we work together as a happy team. We cannot allow personal spites and animosities to destroy the team spirit. I’ve noticed at Board Meetings recently a certain reluctance to face facts on the part of one or two of my directors. Redundant corpuscles—there’s the trouble. . . . Better make it a pint and a half, Susie.’