Salome and the Head/Chapter 18

sweeping up the stage after the drama, one comes across odd things.

The affairs of Mr. Edmund Templar must now, rather late in the day, engage our attention. After all, he is our hero—we owe something to his emotions. On a certain Sunday night, when he came out of the shrubbery and went to the water to wash the blood from his hands, he knew one thing at least: that Saccage, who was dead now, had not died of pneumonia. Therefore Sandra had lied to him, and that letter had been a forgery.

Murder is an ugly thing, and when it stalks, red-stained, among the flowers and tapers of love’s pretty temple, the flowers are apt to fade and the tapers to go out. Figure to yourself Edmund Templar, delayed by a defective taxi-cab, ending his long journey on a borrowed bicycle, propping this up at his love’s shrubbery-gate—longing to see her, to kiss her lips, to look into her eyes, yet tenderly doubtful whether he ought, so late, to intrude, breaking her rest. As he goes through the shrubbery he knocks out against a tree the pipe that had consoled him in the night’s disappointments, slips it into his pocket—or means so to slip it, but it slips not into but past the pocket and falls among the dead sodden leaves. He is conscious of its fall, but not so immediately as to locate to a foot or two the spot where he will be likely to find it. He turns back, strikes a match, and begins to search among the leaves.

His foot turns on something soft—and at the same time hard—too soft for wood, too hard for wood-fungus—something that gives and yet resists. He has not thought of the Tugela for long enough, but he thinks of it now. He strikes another match, and looks—touches, draws back. What he has set his foot on is a dead hand.

This was the situation. Now to see how Mr. Templar met it.

He covered the hand with leaves, and stood still, very uncomfortable, and as yet hardly more than that. The rest of the body was buried—only the hand had crept out, beckoning to vengeance. Elements other than discomfort disengaged themselves.

He uncovered the hand again—pulled at it gently; an arm in a dark coat-sleeve came up out of the earth at the pull. It was a man’s arm—that was something. He now allowed himself to admit that he had feared it might be a woman’s. That man—her husband, with his horrible threats. . . He might have. . . Well, it was not a woman’s arm.

He dared not strike another light. No man cares to run the risk of being found at dead of night in a shrubbery where he has no business in the company of a dead body. It is much safer to go openly to the police and explain exactly how you came to be in that shrubbery, and what you have found there. This is safer for you, and more dangerous for the murderer.

For a few hours afterwards Mr. Templar was thoroughly proud of the self-possession which, in face of a really nerve-shaking incident, enabled him to spend a short time in consideration of all the circumstances before he should set off for Tonbridge and the police station. He stood there, very pleased with his calmness; and as he stood, the moon, surmounting some obstructive bough, shone on the hand and arm—also on a piece of coat, brought out from under the mould by the movement of the dead arm that he had dragged from its hiding place. It was the part of the coat that had lain over the dead man’s heart when it was alive and beating. There was a breast pocket—something square-ended sticking out from it—a pocket-book. Mr. Templar, overcoming with a sense of power certain shrinkings, pulled the pocket-book out. The leather was wet and clammy. And then, all in a breathless minute, he perceived that the body had not really been buried at all—it had just been covered over with loose earth and leaves—placed, as it seemed, in part of a shallow trench or gully that ran across the shrubbery, probably for drainage in the winter floods when half the Medway country is under water.

Templar, much less calm than he had been, and with a growing sense of a growing nightmare, found himself lifting the leaves from the coat in matted, double handfuls; he brushed the earth from it with the side of his hand, as your parlour-maid brushes the crumbs from your dinner-table with the appropriate implement.

Such an industry, practised by moonlight, tries a man’s courage. But Templar was strengthened by a quite incomprehensible determination to see the face of the dead man.

He did not see it. Instead he saw what made him doubt whether he were, indeed, seeing anything but some mad, silly dream. There are limits to the things that one can see in the moonlight, limits to the things one can do. He struck a match, looked once again, turned from the shrubbery and ran.

You will be surprised to learn that he went back. But that was after he had washed his hands in the river and had, under a hedge and by the light of the borrowed bicycle’s lamp, looked at the pocket-book. There were cards in it: and the name on those cards was Isidore Saccage. And there were letters: and the handwriting was a girl’s, and the name at the end of them was Alexandra Mundy.

It was in a blinding mist of sick horror that Templar went back to the shrubbery. He could not face the thoughts that came crowding. Not now—not now. But at least. . . he had loved her. . . he would not be the one to hasten the inevitable consequences of her crime. He would not leave its horrible evidences uncovered. The words of Rupert of Hentzau rang in his ears: “I cannot kill where I’ve kissed—I cannot kill where I’ve, kissed.”

Had he had a spade, and had his search for the face ended differently, he would even have tried to bury the thing more deeply—to put off the day of just retribution. For, you observe, it did not then occur to him to doubt that Sandra was responsible for this man’s death—that she had either killed him, or directly inspired the killing of him. That chauffeur—a suspicion that Templar had dismissed as unworthy now revived—that chauffeur Forrester loved her, dared to love her. He was certain of it—the way he spoke—and. . . He was a strong, burly brute. He could easily have. ..

It was difficult to cover the thing again—the soil and the leaves were scattered—he had to collect other leaves from the further stretch of the gully: he scratched mould up with his fingers and laid it with the leaves—more leaves, more mould. He trampled the heap firm—laid loose leaves over all—and, at last, a little breathless, got away.

The river was waiting for him, lying quiet in the moonlight, the river on which he had first seen her. He dipped his hands in the water again and again.

“My God!” he said, and “My God!” many times. But he would not let himself think till he had reached the Anchor with his borrowed bicycle, and was shut up alone with his bedroom candle in the little bungalow by the river’s edge. The weir sang in his ears as it had done on that first night. But he heard a different song.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, he let the thoughts come. He told himself the tale from the beginning, the tale of this rash adventure in the land of unknown love—the tale that was ended—thus:—

He had seen a child in a wood. No—that had nothing to do with the story. He had seen a dance at a theatre, and, determined to “see life,” had pursued her. She had not been what he expected—and he had loved her. Her husband had turned up—threatened her. She had defied him. Then had come that desolate time of separation. Then the husband had turned up again, and. . . somehow this had happened. Then she had been free. She had forged that letter saying she was free—put the advertisements in the papers—and then. . . He remembered the night when she had slept in his arms, and a hateful thought came with the remembrance. All that time she was playing a part—all the time that she lay in his arms she had known that this thing was lying among the dead leaves. She was playing a part. And if one part, why not another? Had the innocent allurements that had so enraptured and tortured him been really something quite different—the calculated lures of a woman experienced in such scenes? Had he been fooled—fooled all through? “I can’t believe it,” his heart protested. But his brain insisted on the affirmative answer.

“You see, we hardly knew her at all,” said the brain; “we were easily deceived.”

“We knew her very well,” said the heart. “She has been driven mad by this man’s persecution—and got rid of him—but she was not that.”

“I don’t want to think it of her,” said the brain, with a fine impartiality; “but facts are facts.”

“Whatever she’s done, I love her,” said the heart.

“Nonsense!” said the brain; “let’s get on with the story.”

But that was the end of the story. So the brain and heart began again at the beginning and went over everything a second time. And so on till morning—the morning that was Monday.

Mr. Templar shaved and dressed and went to town. He went to that address from which Mrs. Clitheroe had written of the pneumonia death—because the heart had suggested the radiant idea that perhaps that thing in the wood was not Sandra’s husband at all, but only someone with Sandra’s husband’s pocket-book in his possession. Why—that man himself might be the murderer, and the victim might be—oh, anyone! Such a man would have a host of enemies.

Thus the heart, hopefully.

The brain said: “No such luck!”

Nor was there. There was indeed an Andover Terrace, and a number 13, but no Mr. Saccage had ever lodged there: no gentleman at all had ever lodged there. The faded lady who opened the door to him had not come down to letting lodgings, she thanked Heaven, and her name was not Clitheroe or anything like it.

Templar went home and wrote a letter to the woman he had loved—enclosed the letters he had taken from the pocket-book, and, in the evening, left them with Denny at the theatre.

If you have ever loved a woman wholeheartedly, have been on the verge of rapturous marriage with her, and have then discovered, in the most horrible way, that she has lied to you, and is either a murderess or the inspirer of murder, you will be able accurately to picture to yourself the conflicting emotions of Mr. Edmund Templar.

If these things happen not to have happened to you, you will not understand or sympathise with his feelings, and no words of mine can make you.

But you will understand that 64 Curzon Street was no heaven; if there had been nothing else, there was, towards evening, the constant straining of his ears to catch the possible shout of news-vendors:

“Shocking discovery in Kent. Arrest of the murderer.”

What a horrible thing it was to have happened to a man! You note that it was his own suffering and not hers which, up to now, wholly engrossed him.

“I’ve been a fool,” he said. “I’ll get out of London, anyhow. I can’t stand it. And I must get rid of the pocket-book.”

A leather pocket-book belonging to a murdered man is a dangerous thing to throw away. To burn it is difficult, and in any case, needs a fire. To ask his housekeeper for a fire in August were simply to court suspicion and inquiry. He thought of his Aunt, affectionate, and sympathetic to chills; the merest suggestion of a cold draught would, in her house, ensure a fire roaring in the big fireplace of the spare bedroom. He would go down to the New Forest. He did.

And, arrived at Lyndhurst station, he got out there, as once, on a June morning, eight years ago. He had not meant to do it. Nor did he mean to look for that enchanted glade where a child had danced to the piping of a lame boy.

But he found it—a little changed, a little grown, bush and tree; but the glade—the sylvan theatre, without doubt, the same.

He threw his suitcase down on the moss that had felt her feet—threw himself down beside it, and for a very long time he lay there, and did not move.

And as he lay his heart spoke, and his brain, at first silenced, was, in the end, convinced.

From the past, in that quiet place, the spirit of the child who had danced there—the girl who had slept in his arms, came out and looked into his soul with quiet, reproachful eyes.

“How could you doubt me?” it said. And, “How could you believe, on any evidence, that I was that?” And, “We knew each other so little? Yes—but think what you do know of me—what your heart knows. Is it not enough?”

It seemed to him as he lay there that he had sloughed something—an ugly skin that had cramped his heart’s beat and made blind his eyes. Bands had been loosened that bound him to base things—faith had been set free to soar to things beautiful and dear. It was wholly unreasonable, like all divine revelations—incredible as, save to faith, all great truths are; but as he lay there the thing happened. In gradual enlightenment, in a torture dearer than any joy he had known, he saw her as she was—and saw himself as he had been—base, cowardly, faithless—denying his love at the first doubt, deserting his beloved at the first trial.

And then remorse, regret, self-contempt, love, faith, all merged in a passionate movement of pity and protection.

What he had believed—he, with all his knowledge of her, with all his love to guide him—what he had believed, others would believe. And he had run away, leaving her to face—what?

The thought brought him to his feet. Back, back, now, this moment, to be where he ought to be—where he desired to be—at her side—to help her to face what had to be faced!

She would be dancing to-night. Of course she knew nothing of that thing in the shrubbery. She would be dancing. He would see her at the theatre—go home with her, tell her the horrible thing—very quietly and gently and carefully he would tell her—and together they would tell the police, and go through with whatever of horror of inquiries and inquests had to be gone through. If only she had not already found it out! If only she was not already bearing, alone, some unknown horror of fear and bewilderment!

If only it were not too late! It was.

It was not till he was in the train that he remembered the letter he had written to her. What would she think? What had he said? This was Tuesday evening. It was twenty-four hours since she must have received that letter. How she must be hating him! Or would she only suffer—dumbly, patiently, as women do? He prided himself on the knowledge such generalisations represent. If only he had not been in such a hurry to dissociate himself from every possible danger! What was it he had said in that damned letter? He could not remember the wording, though he tried over and over again. Oh! if only he had not written!

Excellent reader, never write letters in a hurry—cruel letters, that is. Love-letters you may pour out red-hot and post before the ink is dry. But not cruel letters. Give yourself a day or two for reflection. Life is a rum thing. And you never know.

In spite of the letter, the two hours in the train were happy ones—the last happy hours, by the way, that he was to have for some little time. The reaction from the horrors of his dirty suspicions, his silly certainties; the knowledge—for it was no less—of her perfect purity and innocence, and of his own reborn loyalty, now insisting on its immortal and changeless character, exalted this foolish young man to an intoxication of Quixotic proportions. He was glad this had happened, even though it would entail certain unpleasantness for her. Now, indeed, he could show her how he loved her. He would stand by her—help her through everything—be as well as lover, friend, wonderful counsellor, angel from Heaven.

He was not more foolish perhaps than other young men—he was only more—well, never mind—but I own that he ought, the night before, to have bought an evening paper; and not merely to have waited breathlessly for those newspaper cries which do not sound in Curzon Street. Had he done so, he would have known that early on Monday morning a young milkman had, whistling, taken the short cut through the shrubbery to The Wood House, and had noticed a curious bulge in the middle of the gully that ran through it. In his light-hearted bucolic way, he had kicked that bulge with his serviceable, bucolic boot, had paused, curious, at the suggestion his kicking foot conveyed to his calf-like brain—had stooped to investigate, and had run all the way to Yalding without once looking behind him, where, for all he knew, the thing he had put his hands into was following fast on his footsteps. Arrived at Yalding, he fell down in a fit—the first of many, and was never again the same light-hearted, whistling young milkman.

There had been telegraphings and telephonings, and the police had gone to Wood House—to find Aunt Dusa breakfasting alone on bread-and-milk. Something on a hurdle, under a sheet—and the threatening words of an enterprising inspector, in whom France had lost an admirable juge d’instruction, paralysed Mrs. Mosenthal’s discretion. Not all the visiting cards of that which would visit no more had been in the letter-case. There was one, dog’s-eared, in the waistcoat pocket of what lay under the sheet on the hurdle. Aunt Dusa lost her head and found her tongue. The evening papers knew all about Mr. Saccage and all about Sandra, who was Sylvia, and all about Mr. Edmund Templar, who was the lover of Sylvia, who was Sandra, the wife of the thing under the sheet—no—its widow.

Nor was there wanting—the police were in luck that day—the testimony of the Anchor, to which Mr. Templar had returned so late and with such muddy boots; nor that of the shepherd, visiting a sick ewe, and witnessing by moonlight the double washing of a man’s hands in the river. With admirable rustic cunning he had kept in the hedge shadow, and followed to the Anchor the man who washed—Mr. Edmund Templar, the lover of the dancer whose husband was lying murdered in the shrubbery of her house.

That was why, when Mr. Templar presented himself at the Hilarity, sent in a note to Sylvia, and waited in the vestibule for an answer, he was kept waiting quite an appreciable time. Just long enough, in fact, for the Management, which had read the evening papers, to send out a trusty messenger, and long enough for that messenger’s return.

The messenger returned with some men in blue helmets, and one, in authority, with a peaked cap.

Mr. Edmund Templar, full of love and remorse and pity and the protective instinct, waiting for his love’s answer to his loving entreaty for an interview—an explanation of his hateful letter, wondered idly what they wanted.

Enlightenment was not delayed.

Mr. Edmund Templar looked round indignantly at a touch on the shoulder, and found himself arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Isidore Saccage.

They took him away in a cab.