‘Come Francis, I mean you no harm, and look what I have here — see!’
With a flourish that would have befitted the stage I produced the shirt from under my cloak. It seemed to glimmer as I passed it over, although for all that was to be seen in the misty darkness I might have shown him a piece of bed-sheet. Francis reached out eagerly and clasped the unwashed item. I believe he even put it up to his nostrils and snuffed his own scent. The question that would have sprung to my lips in such circumstances — why had I taken this garment into my hands? — did not occur to the simple servant or, if it did, he chose not to voice it.
‘There are one or two other things I must discuss with you, Francis, and they concern the death of your late master. I have to tell you’ — and here I leaned closer to him and whispered confidentially — ‘that I suspect foul play was involved. I need your help. I need your head in this matter, but we must discuss it elsewhere.’
I took him by the arm and turned in the direction of the river. When you speak soothingly to an animal and caress it, the creature will follow you at heels, even though it is half aware that it goes to its doom; even so I urged Francis to accompany me with mild words and a gentle touch. He permitted himself to be led by the nose. The lane sloped down towards the water and turned into a muddy slide. The tide was out, and the slime and stones that spend half their long lives under the filthy water were revealed to the nose if not the eye. I sensed rather than heard the river’s black rush beyond the bank of the mist.
‘Here, sir?’
He was frightened again.
‘This is away from prying eyes, is it not.’
‘It is night, sir, and quiet and misty. Who is see to us?’
‘Just so.’
He tried again. ‘It is not healthful to be out and about so late.’
‘We shall not be long. Anyway you are close to the house and that should bring you comfort.’
Behind us, though unseen, loomed the garden wall. It was in there, over the wall, last spring that I had. . And now here, almost in the same spot again, I was to. . perhaps there is no end to this process once it has been begun. Murder breeds murder. It is the slippery slope, like the muddy chute which leads down to the banks of our river. It is even as the descent into hell, easy and easier still the further that you slide down. Facilis est descensus Averno.
‘Why should I need comfort?’ said Francis.
‘It is a comfort to be close to the familiar, when one is in extremis.’
Poor man, he did not understand exactly what I meant but he knew what was going to happen. I held him by the upper arm, but tenderly. If he had wanted to, he could have broken away, have slithered and scrabbled across the mud and pebbles up into the safety of Mixen Lane and the side-door of his master’s house. Even in the darkness he should have found his path by the upward slant of the ground. He was a quick, nervous man, and might possibly have outrun me; but I knew he would not attempt to leave my grasp.
‘You knew I was there, Francis?’
‘I do not think so, sir.’
‘No matter. You my not have seen me but I have seen you. You jerked your head round, so, as you crossed the garden which lies over that wall.’
In the darkness I mimed the sudden movement of the head which I remembered him making. His upper arm tensed under my grasp. Perhaps he was able to see me now. The mist on the river gave off a queer dirty yellow light as if it were sickening from within.
But if Francis saw me now, he had not glimpsed me then, on the day that I murdered William. Francis, the good servant sent in quest of his master, had turned his white face straight at me but his eyes were not accustomed to the growing dark and I was obscure among the budding foliage. To me, on that evening in early spring, the scene appeared almost light as day. I had owl-sight. The moon was up, and the evening star hovered atop the wall. Moments later I had heard him gasp as he stumbled across the body of my enemy, which swayed slightly in the airs of evening. Then there were torches and confusion; flickering lights while the body was hoisted from the hammock; a woman wailing, one of the servants and not my lady Alice. But before all that to-do I had witnessed the action which Francis performed: delicately, he extended his arm and brushed at the cheek of his deceased master. It was a gesture that spoke well for him, it was a gentle and gracious movement. It was also the gesture that would now ensure his death.
‘You were up a tree, sir.’
‘Ha, I was like the owl.’
‘ — a less innocent creature I think.’
‘What?’
‘The worm, sir.’
Although I realised that Francis was talking to delay the inevitable, I was minded to humour him, a dead man. I was surprised too at the firmness and composure of his voice.
‘The worm, Francis?’
‘The worm that flies by night.’
‘That is not altogether inappropriate, my friend, for as you know-’ and here I swelled slightly as I spoke the words of Hamlet’s father, the ghost, the late king -
‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me.’
I have never been able to resist an audience, even of one. Francis seemed curiously relaxed when he said, ‘And you were that serpent, sir.’
‘Just so-’
He had taken me off-guard as I was reciting those lines, and tore his arm from my slackened grip. Nimbly he darted away into the mist. I was so startled that I merely stood and stared at the blank air. I listened. There were sounds of scraping and splashing as Francis made his frantic way across the mud and shingle. For an instant I was no longer sure of my own orientation, and where the river flowed, where the walls of the garden stood. I cursed myself for having brought this man down to the shore of the river and toyed with him, when I might have made an end of the whole miserable business in the lane by the side-gate and no one any the wiser. Now I was mortally exposed if he should regain the safety of the mansion.
From quite near at hand there came a dull thump and a drawn-out sigh, and I jumped nearly out of my skin because I thought that someone else was on my patch of bank. The noise was almost direct ahead of me. I stopped breathing. Now there was nothing to be heard above or below the sound of the gliding river.
I crouched down and whistled softly, as you might to draw on a frightened dog.
‘Francis,’ I said softly, ‘oh Francis. Come back. I mean you no harm and never did.’
Silence.
I groaned.
‘Francis. I have injured myself. I need your assistance. Help me.’
In front of me coiled the dirty yellow mist. To my left there was a plop and then a splash as small things returned to the water. But no human sound. I waited a few more moments and then, half crouching, I edged my way forward, hands splayed, feet slithering on the slime and stone.
He was closer than I expected, and face down in the mud. He had slipped as he was trying to effect his escape from me. Whether by accident or design he had made off in a direction parallel to the river rather than attempting to regain the little lane that ran up beside the house. In the darkness I was able to make out his shape — for who else could it be? — together with a black pointed object that sat next to his head. This I reached out to touch and then more quickly withdrew my hand. It was hard and slick, and not with river-mud. When Francis fell he struck his head on a rocky outcrop which might have been fashioned to brain a man, it was so sharp-pointed and so angled upwards.
Francis groaned. A tremor passed down the dark form at my feet. He was still breathing. With my nerves on fire, with a buzzing in my ears, with a red curtain closing in front of my eyes, I straddled his prone body. I half raised him from the ground by his head, using my two hands as if I were lifting a small round boulder. His body seemed to make a motion to go after the head and to rise up between my legs as if to overthrow me, but it was light, it was tiny, it was like a tail to this round head clasped between my hands. Then I flung him back down again, head and all, so that the protruding stone might do its work properly. Something spattered my face. There was the same sound that I had heard earlier, of his head striking against the rock, but this time it was not followed by a sigh.