‘Yes,’ said Lathom, eagerly, ‘good idea. Let’s have a drink.’ He wandered about. ‘Where the devil’s he put the whisky?’ He flung open a cupboard door, and groped about, muttering.
At this point a thought occurred to me.
‘Would Harrison go out and leave the door unlocked?’ I said. ‘He’s a careful sort of fellow as a rule.’
‘What?’ Lathom’s head emerged for a moment from the cupboard. ‘No — no — I should think he would lock up.’
‘Then he must be about somewhere,’ I said. We had been talking almost in whispers — I suppose with the idea of not disturbing the sleeper, but now I lost patience.
‘Harrison!’ I shouted.
‘Shut up!’ said Lathom. ‘He must have left the whisky in the bedroom.’ He picked up the candle and plunged into the inner room.
The shadows parted and flowed in after him as he went, leaving me in darkness again. His footsteps shuffled to a halt and there was a long pause. Then he spoke, in a curious, thick voice with a catch in it, like a gramophone needle going over a crack.
‘I say, Munting. Come here a minute. Something’s up.’
The inner room was in a sordid confusion. My hurrying footsteps tripped over some bedclothes. There were two beds in the room, and Lathom was standing by the farther of the two. He stepped aside, and his hand shook so that the candle-flame danced. I thought at first that the man on the bed had moved, but it was only the dancing candle.
The bed was broken and tilted grotesquely sideways. Harrison was sprawled over it in a huddle of soiled blankets. His face was twisted and white and his eyeballs rolled up so that only the whites showed. I stooped over him and felt for his wrist. It was cold and heavy, and when I released it it fell back on the bed like dead-weight. I did not like the look of the nostrils — black caverns, scooped in wax — not flesh, anyway — and the mouth, twisted unpleasantly upwards from the teeth, with the pale tongue sticking through.
‘My God!’ I cried, but softly — and turned to look at Lathom, ‘the man’s dead!’
‘Dead?’ He was looking at me, not at Harrison. ’Are you sure?’
‘Sure?’ I put a finger beneath the fallen jaw, which woodenly resisted me. ‘Why, he must have been dead for hours. He’s stiff, man, stiff!’
‘So he is, poor old b—’ said Lathom.
He began to laugh.
‘Stop that,’ I said, snatching the candle away from him, and dumping him roughly down on to the other bed. ‘Pull yourself together. You want a drink.’
I found the whisky with some trouble. It was on the floor, under Harrison’s bed. He must have grasped at it his struggles and let it roll away from him. Fortunately, the cork was in place. There was a tumbler, too, but I did not touch that. I fetched another from the living-room (Lathom cried out not to be left in the dark, but I paid no attention), and poured him out a stiff peg, and made him swallow it neat. Then I stood over him as he sat and shuddered.
‘Sorry, old man,’ he said at last. ‘Silly of me to make an ass of myself. Bit of a startler, isn’t it? But your face — oh, Lord! — if you could have seen yourself! It was priceless.’
He began to giggle again.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said I. ‘We’ve got no time for hysterics. Something’s got to be done.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Yes — something must be done. A doctor, or something. All right, old man. Give me another drink and I’ll be as right as rain.’
I gave him another small one and took some myself. That seemed to clear my mind a little.
‘How far are we from Manaton?’
‘About three miles, I think — or a little over.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose somebody there will have a telephone, or can send a messenger. One of us had better get along there as fast as possible and get on to the police?’
‘Police?’
‘Yes, of course, you ass. They’ve got to know.’
‘But you don’t suppose there’s anything wrong about it?’
‘Wrong? Well, there’s a dead man — that’s pretty wrong, I should think. He must have died of something. Did he have a heart, or fits, or anything?’
‘Not that I know of.’
I surveyed the distasteful bed again.
‘It looks more as though — he’d eaten something—’
I stopped, struck by an idea.
‘Let’s look at the things in the other room,’ I said. Lathom jumped to his feet.
‘When I left him he said something about fungi — he was going to get some special kind—’
We went out. In a saucepan on the table was a black, pulpy mess. I sniffed it cautiously. It had a sourish, faintly fungoid odour, like a cellar.
‘Oh, Lord,’ whimpered Lathom, ‘I knew it would happen some day. I told him over and over again. He laughed at me. Said he couldn’t possibly make a mistake.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but it looks rather as if he had. Poor devil. Of course, it would happen the very day there was nobody here to help him. I suppose he was absolutely on his own. Didn’t any tradesmen call, or anything?’
‘The carrier comes over on Mondays and Thursdays with supplies,’ said Lathom, ‘and takes the orders for the next visit.’
‘No milkman? No baker?’
‘No. Condensed milk, and the carrier brings the bread. If there’s nobody in he just puts the things on the window-sill.’
‘I see.’ It seemed to me pretty ghastly. ‘Well,’ I went on, ‘will you go or shall I?’
‘We’d better both go, hadn’t we?’
‘Nonsense.’ I was positive about this. I don’t know why, except that it seemed damnable, somehow, to leave Harrison’s body alone, when leaving it could do no possible harm. ‘If you don’t feel fit to go, I will.’
‘Yes — no!’ He looked about him uneasily. ‘All right, you go. It’s straight up the hill, you can’t miss it.’
I took up my hat, and was going, when he called me back.
‘I say — do you mind — I think I’d rather go after all. I feel rather rotten. I’ll be better in the fresh air.’
‘Now look here,’ I said firmly. ‘We can’t stay shilly-shallying all night. If you don’t like staying in the house, you’d better go yourself. But make up your mind, because the quicker we get on to somebody the better. Get the police and they’ll probably be able to find a doctor. And you’ll have to give them Mrs Harrison’s address.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes — I suppose — I suppose — they’d better break it to her.’
‘Somebody’s got to. It’s a beastly business, but you don’t know any relations you could get hold of, do you?’
‘No. Very well. I’ll see to it. Sure you won’t come with me? You don’t mind staying?’
‘The sooner you go, the shorter time I’ll have to stay,’ I reminded him.
‘Right-ho!’ He paused, appeared about to say something, then repeated ‘right-oh!’ and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Three miles uphill in the dark — it would take him close on the hour, certainly. Then he had to knock somebody up, find a telephone, if there was one, get on to the police — say half an hour for that. Then, it all depended whether there was an available car in the village — whether he came straight back, or waited for the officials, who would come, presumably from Bovey Tracey. I need not, I thought, expect anything to happen under an hour and three-quarters or so. I suddenly remembered that I was cold, and started to hunt for kindling. I found some, after a little search, in an outhouse. The fire consented to light without much persuasion, and after that, and when I had found and lighted two extra candles, I began to feel in better condition to take stock of things.
A bottle of Bovril on the mantelpiece presented itself to me with helpful suggestiveness. I took up the kettle to fill it at the tap. A glance at the sink nearly turned me from my intention, but I conquered the sudden nausea and drew my water with care. Impulse would have flooded the repulsive evidences of sickness away, but as the phrase flashed through my mind the word ‘evidence’ asserted itself. ‘I must preserve the evidence,’ I said to myself, and found myself subconsciously taking note that this trifling episode went to prove — as I had always believed — that Anatole France was right in supposing that we always, or at any rate usually, think in actual words.