There I stayed until Charles’ step outside warned me. I met the concerned glance from his sharp, searching eyes, and we walked together to the study.
‘This is bound to be a horror for you,’ he said. ‘And nothing that I or anyone else can say is going to alter that, is it?’
Nowadays Charles and I did not see each other often. When I first came to London as a poor young man to read in chambers, he had befriended me. We were the same age, but he was rich and had influential relatives. Since then he had changed his way of life, and become a doctor. When we met, the old intuitive sympathy sparked between us. But that morning he did not realize how little I was feeling, or what that little was.
‘There is no doubt, I suppose?’ I asked.
‘You don’t think so yourself?’ he answered.
I shook my head, and he said: ‘No, there’s no doubt. None at all.’
He added, with astringent pity: ‘She did it very competently. She had a very strong will.’
‘When did she do it?’ I had gone on speaking with neutrality. He was studying me protectively, as though he were making a prognosis.
‘Some time last night, I think.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was out for the evening. I was having a cheerful time at a club, as a matter of fact.’
‘I shouldn’t take that to heart, if I were you.’
He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes brilliant in the dark room, and went on: ‘You know, Lewis, it wasn’t such an intolerable wrench for her to die as it would be for you or me. She wasn’t so tied to life as we are. People are as different in the ways they die as in the ways they live. Some go out as though they were shrugging their shoulders. I imagine that she did. I think she just slipped out of life. I don’t think she suffered much.’
He had never liked her, he had thought her bad for me, but he was speaking of her with kindness. He went on: ‘You’re going to suffer a lot more, you know.’
He added: ‘The danger is, you’ll feel a failure.’
I did not respond.
‘Whatever you’d done or been, it wouldn’t have helped her,’ he said, with energy and insistence.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘that doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters, if you’re going to feel you’ve failed. And no one but yourself can be any good to you there.’
Again I did not respond.
He gazed at me sternly: he knew that my emotions were as strong as his: he had not seen them dead before. He was using his imagination to help me, he did not speak for some time, his glance stayed hard and appraising as he reached a settlement in his own mind.
‘The only thing I can do for you now is superficial, but it might help a little,’ he said, after a silence.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Does anyone else know about her?’
‘Only Mrs Wilson,’ I said.
‘Would she keep quiet?’
‘It’s possible,’ I replied.
‘If necessary, could you guarantee it?’
I did not reply at once. Then I said: ‘If necessary, I think I could.’
Charles nodded. He said: ‘I expect it will make you just a little worse to have other people knowing about her death, I know it would me. You’ll feel that your whole life with her is open to them, and that they’re blaming you. You’re going to take too much responsibility on yourself whatever happens, but this will make it worse.’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘Well, I can save you that,’ he broke out.
He went on: ‘It won’t help much, but it will a little. I’m willing to sign a certificate that she died a natural death.’
Charles was a bold man, who lived in close touch with moral experiences. Perhaps he had that special boldness, that ability to act in moral isolation, that one found most commonly in men born rich. Between perjuring himself, which he would dislike more than most, and leaving me exposed he had made his choice.
I was not altogether surprised: in fact, in sending for him rather than for any of the doctors near, I had some such hope half-concealed.
I was tempted. Quickly I was running through the practical entanglements: if there was any risk to him professionally I could not let him run it. We had each been thinking of that, while he questioned me. Could I answer absolutely for Mrs Wilson? Who else need know the truth? The Knights must, as soon as they arrived. But they would keep the secret for their own sakes.
I thought it over. As I did so, I had little insight into my own motives. It was not entirely, or even mainly, because of practical reasons or scruples about Charles’ risk that I answered: ‘It’s not worth it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
Charles went on persuading me until he was convinced that my mind was made up. Then he said that he was relieved. He left to inquire about the inquest, while I telephoned the Knights. I told Mrs Knight the bare news and asked them to come that afternoon. She sounded reliable and active in the face of shock, but she cried: ‘I don’t know how he’ll get through it.’
That same afternoon I had to go to a committee, among civil, sensible strangers.
Back in the house, blacked-out early on the December night, I could not stay still until the Knights came. Mrs Wilson had gone out to shop, getting a meal ready for them, and I was alone in the empty house. Yet no house seemed empty while someone lay dead: the reverse was true, there was a claustrophobic pressure, although I had not visited the sitting-room again.
In my restlessness I turned over Sheila’s books once more, re-read the letters in her desk, in the silly hope that I might find news of her. By a fluke, I did find just a little, not among her books or papers, but in her bag. Expecting nothing, I picked out her engagement diary and rifled through it; most of the pages shone bare, since the appointments with Robinson in January and February: since then, she had seen almost no one. But in the autumn pages I caught sight of a few written words — no, not just words, whole sentences.
It was an ordinary small pocket book, three inches by two, and she had scaled down her writing, which as a rule was elegant but had a long-sighted tallness. There were only seven entries, beginning in October, a week after the afternoon which she referred to as her ‘crack-up’. As I read, I knew that she had written for herself alone. Some of the entries were mere repetitions.
4 November: Ten days since the sensation in my head. No good. No one believes me.
12 November: January 1st bad enough anyway. Seems hopeless after something snapped in head.
28 November: Told I must go on. Why should I? That’s the one comfort, I needn’t go on.
5 December: Bit better. Perhaps I can go on. It’s easier, when I know I needn’t.
Nothing more than that — but for the first time I knew how fixed her delusion was. I knew also that she had contemplated suicide for weeks past, had had it in her mind when I tried to hearten her.
Perhaps even when she first said she was handing in her resignation, that was a hint, as much as eight months ago. Had she intended me to understand her? But she was not certain, she had done no more than hint, even to herself. Had she been certain two nights before, when I told her again she must go on? Had she been certain next morning at breakfast, the last time I saw her alive, when she was making fun of me?
I heard Mrs Wilson’s step downstairs. I did not look at Sheila’s writing any more: it was not to think, it was because of the claustrophobic pressure upon me in the house, that I went out of the front door and walked along the Embankment in a night as calm as the last night, as calm as when, quite untroubled, I had walked up St James’s Street with Gilbert Cooke. The sky was dark, so was the river, so were the houses.