They had been very pressing and at last, on the third time of asking, he had accepted. Resignedly, almost fatalistically, he had agreed to dine with them. But as he began the long drive out of London, he thought petulantly that they ought to have had the tact to drop the acquaintance altogether. No other employee he had sacked had ever made such approaches to him. Threats, yes. Several had threatened him and one had tried blackmail, but no one had ever had the effrontery to invite him to dinner. It wasn't done. A discreet man wouldn't have done it. But of course Hugo Crouch wasn't a discreet man and that, among other things, was why he had been sacked.
He knew why they had asked him. They wanted to hold a court of enquiry, to have the whole thing out. Knowing this, he had suggested they meet in a restaurant and at his expense. They couldn't harangue a man iin a public restaurant and he wouldn't be at their mercy. But they had insisted he come to their house and in the end he had given way. He was an elderly man with a heart condition; it was sixteen miles slow driving from his flat to their house--monstrous on a filthy February night--but he would show them he could take it, he would be one too many for them. The chairman of Frasers would show them he wasn't to be intimidated by a bumptious do-gooder like Hugo Crouchm, and he would cope with the situation just as he had coped in the past with the blackmailer.
By the time he reached the outskirts of the Forest, the rain was coming down so hard that he had to put his windscreen wipers on to top speed, and he felt more than ever thankful that he had got this new car with all its efficient gadgets. Certainly the firm wouldn't have been able to run to it if he had kept Hugo Crouch on a day longer. If he had agreed to all Hugo's demands he would still be stuck with that old Daimler and he would never have managed that winter cruise. Hugo had been a real thorn in his flesh what with his extravagance and his choosing to live in a house in the middle of Epping Forest. And it was in the middle, totally isolated, not even on the edge of one of the Forest villages. The general manager of Frasers had to be within reach, on call. Burying oneself out here was ridiculous.
The car's powerful headlights showed a dark, winding lane aheadm the grey tree trunks making it appear like some sombre, pillared corridor. And this picture was cut off every few seconds by a curtain of rain, to reappear with the sweep of the wipers. Fortunately, he had been there once before, otherwise he might have passed the high brick wall and the wooden gates behind which stood the Crouch house, the peak-roofed Victorian villa, drab, shabby, and to his eyes quite hideous. Anyone who put a demolition order on that would be doing a service to the environment, he thought, and then he drove in through the gates.
There wasn't a single light showing. He remembered that they lived in the back, but they might have put a light on to greet him. But for his car headlamps, he wouldn't have been able to see his way at all. Clutching the box of peppermint creams he had bought for Elizabeth Crouch, he splashed across the almost flooded paving, under eaves from which water poured as from a row of taps, and made for the front door, which happened to be--which would be--at the far side of the house. It was hard to tell where their garden ended and the Forest began, for no demarcation was visible. Nothing was visible but black, rain-lashed branches, faintly illuminated by a dim glow showing through the fanlight over the door.
He rang the bell hard, keeping his finger on the push, hoping the rain hadn't got through his coat to his hundred-guinea suit. A jet of water struck the back of his neck, sending a shiver right through him, and then the door was opened.
"Duncan! You must be soaked. Have you had a dreadful journey?"
He gasped out, "Awful, awful!" and ducked into the dry sanctuary of the hall. "What a night!" He thrust the chocolates at her, gave her his hand. Then he remembered that in the old days they always used to kiss. Well, he never minded kissing a pretty woman and it hadn't been her fault. "How are you, Elizabeth?" he said after their cheeks had touched.
"I'm fine. Let me take your coat. I'll take it to the kitchen and dry it. Hugo's in the sitting room. You know your way, don't you?"
Down a long passage, he remembered, that was never properly lighted and wasn't heated at all. The whole place called out for central heating. He was by now extremely cold and he couldn't help thinking of his flat, where the radiators got so hot that you had to open the windows even in February and where, had he been home, his housekeeper would at this moment be placing before him a portion of hot pate to be followed by poulet San Josef. Elizabeth Crouch, he recalled, was rather a poor cook.
Outside the sitting-room door he paused, girding himself for the encounter. He hadn't set eyes on Hugo Crouch since the man had marched out of the office in a huff because he, Duncan Fraser, chairman of Frasers, had tentatively suggested he might be happier in another job. Well, the sooner the first words were over the better. Very few men in his position, he thought, would let the matter weigh on their minds at all or have his sensitivity. Very few, for that matter, would have come.
He would be genial, casual, perhaps a little avuncular. Above all, he would avoid at any cost the subject of Hugo's dismissal. They wouldn't be able to make him talk about it if he was determined not to; ultimately, the politeness of hosts to guest would put up a barrier to stop them. He opened the door, smiling pleasantly, achieving a merry twinkle in his eye. "Well, here I am, Hugo! I've made it."
Hugo wore a very sour look, the kind of look Duncan had often seen on his face when some more than usually extravagant order or request of his had been countermanded. He didn't smile. He gave Duncan his hand gravely and asked him what he would like to drink.
Duncan looked quickly around the room, which hadn't changed and was still furnished with rather grim Victorian pieces. There was, at any rate, a huge fire of logs burning in the grate. "Ah, yes, a drink," he said, rubbing his hands together. He didn't dare ask for whisky, which he would have liked best, because his doctor had forbidden it. "A little dry Vermouth?"
"I'm afraid I don't have any Vermouth."
This rejoinder, though spoken quite lightly, though he had even expected something of the sort, gave Duncan a slight shock. It put him on his mettle and yet it jolted him. He had known, of course, that they would start on him but he hadn't anticipated the first move coming so promptly. All right, let the man remind him he couldn't afford fancy drinks because he had lost his job. He, Duncan, wouldn't be drawn. "Sherry, then," he said. "You do have sherry?"
"Oh, yes, we have sherry. Come and sit by the fire."
As soon as he was seated in front of those blazing logs and had begun to thaw out, he decided to pursue the conversation along the lines of the weather. It was the only subject he could think of to break the ice until Elizabeth came in, and they were doing quite well at it, moving into such sidelines as floods in East Anglia and crashes in motorway fog, when she appeared and sat next to him.
"We haven't asked anyone else, Duncan. We wanted to have you to ourselves."
A pointless remark, he thought, under the circumstances. Naturally, they hadn't asked anyone else. The presence of other guests would have defeated the exercise. But perhaps it hadn't been so pointless, after all. It could be an opening gambit.
"Delightful," he said.
"We've got such a lot to talk about. I thought it would be nicer this way."
"Much nicer." Such a lot to talk about? There was only one thing she could mean by that. But she needn't think--silent Hugo sitting there with his grim, moody face needn't think--that he would help them along an inch of the way. If they were going to get on to the subject they would have to do all the spadework themselves. "We were just saying," he said, "how tragic all these motorway crashes are. Now I feel all this could be stopped by a very simple method."
He outlined the simple method but he could tell they weren't really interested and he wasn't surprised when Elizabeth said, "That's fascinating, Duncan, but let's talk about you. What have you been doing lately?"
Controlling the business your husband nearly ruined. "Oh, this and that," he said. "Nothing much."
"Did you go on a cruise this winter?"
"Er--yes I did. The Caribbean, as a matter fact."
"That's nice. I'm sure the change did you good."
Implying he needed having good done to him, of course. She had only got on to cruises so that she could point out that some people couldn't afford them. "I had a real est," he said heartily. "I must tell you about a most amusing thing that happened to me on the way home." He told them but it didn't sound very amusing, and although Elizabeth smiled half-heartedly, Hugo didn't, "Well, it seemed funny at the time," he said.
"We can eat in five minutes," said Elizabeth. "Tell me, Duncan, did you buy that villa you were so keen on in the South of France?"
"Oh, yes, I bought it." She was looking at him very curiously, very impertinently really, waiting for him to apologize for spending his own money, he supposed. "Listen to that rain," he said. "It hasn't let up at all."
They agreed that it hadn't and silence fell. He could tell from the glance they exchanged--he was very astute in these matters--that they knew they had been baulked for the time being. And they both looked pretty fed up, he thought triumphantly. But the woman was weighing in again and a bit nearer the bone this time.
"Who do you think we ran into last week, Duncan? John Churchouse."
The man who had done that printing for Frasers a couple of years back. He had got the order, Duncan remembered, just about the time of Hugo's promotion. He sat tight, drank the rest of his sherry.
"He told us he'd been in hospital for months and lost quite a lot of business. I felt so..."
"I wonder if I might wash my hands," Duncan asked firmly. "If you could just tell me where the bathroom is?"
"Of course." She looked disappointed, as well she might. "It's the door facing you at the top of the stairs."
Duncan made his way to the bathroom. He mustn't think he was going to get off the hook as easily as that. They would be bound to start on him again during the meal. Very likely they thought a dinner table a good place to hold an inquest. Still, he'd be ready for them, he'd done rather well up to now.
They were both waiting for him at the foot of the stairs to lead him into the dining room and again he saw the woman give her husband one of those looks that are the equivalent of prompting nudges. Hugo was probably getting cold feet. In these cases, of course, it was always the women who were more aggressive. Duncan gave a swift glance at the table and the plate of hors d'oeuvres, sardines and anchovies and artichoke hearts, most unsuitable for the time of the year.
"I'm afraid you've been to a great deal of trouble, Elizabeth," he said graciously.
She gave him a dazzling smile. He had forgotten that smile of hers, how it lit her whole face, her eyes as flashing blue as a kingfisher's plumage. "'The labour we delight in,'" she said, "'physics pain.'"
"Ah, Macbeth." Good, an excellent topic to get them through the first course. "Do you know, the only time we three ever went to the theatre together was to see Macbeth?"
"I remember," she said. "Bread, Duncan?"
"Thank you. I saw a splendid performance of Macbeth by that Polish company last week. Perhaps you've seen it?"
"We haven't been to the theatre at all this winter," said Hugo.
She must have kicked him under the table to prompt that one. Duncan took no notice. He told them in detail about the Polish Macbeth, although such was his mounting tenseness that he couldn't remember half the names of the characters, or, for that matter, the names of the actors.
"I wish Keith could have seen it," she said. "It's his set play for his exam."
She was going to force him to ask after her sons and be told they had had to take them away from that absurdly expensive boarding school. Well, he wouldn't. Rude it might be, but he wouldn't ask.
"I don't think you ever met our children, Duncan?"
"No, I didn't."
"They'll be home on half-term next week. I'm so delighted that their half-term happens to coincide with mine."
"Yours?" he said suspiciously.
"Elizabeth has gone back to teaching."
"Really?" said Duncan. "No, I won't have any more, thank you. That was delicious. Let me give you a hand. If I could carry something...?"
"Please don't trouble. I can manage." She looked rather offended. "If you two will excuse me I'll see to our main course."
He was left alone with Hugo in the chilly dining room. He shifted his legs from under the cloth to bring them closer to the one-bar electric heater. Hugo began to struggle with the cork of the wine bottle. Unable to extract it, he cursed under his breath.
"Let me try."
"I'll be able to cope quite well, thanks, if you don't watch me," Hugo said sharply, and then, irrelevantly if you didn't know nothing those two said was irrelevant, "I'm doing a course in accountancy."
"As a wine waiter, Hugo," said Duncan, "you make a very good accountant, ha ha!"
Hugo didn't laugh. He got the cork out at last. "I think I'll do all right. I was always reasonably good at figures."
"So you were, so you were. And more than reasonably good." That was true. It had been with personnel that the man was so abysmally bad, giving junior executives and little typists ideas above their station. "I'm sure you will do well." Why didn't the woman come back? It must have been ten minutes since she had gone off to that kitchen, down those miles of passages. His own wife, long dead, would have got that main course into serving dishes before they had sat down to the hors d'oeuvres. "Get a qualification, that's the thing," he said. In the distance he heard the wheels of a trolley coming. It was a more welcome sound than that of the wheels of the train one has awaited for an hour on a cold platform. He didn't like the woman but anything was better than being alone with Hugo. Why not get it over now, he thought, before they began on the amazingly small roasted chicken which had appeared? He managed a smile. He said, "I can tell you've both fallen on your feet. I'm quite sure, Hugo, you'll look back on all this when you're a successful accountant and thank God you and Frasers parted company."
And that ought to be that. They had put him through their inquisition and now they would perhaps let him eat this overcooked mess that passed for dinner in peace. At last they would talk of something else, not leave it to him who had been making the running all the evening.
But instead of conversation, there was a deep silence. No one seemed to have anything to say. And although Duncan, working manfully at his chicken wing, racked his brains for a topic, he could think of nothing. Their house, his flat, the workpeople at Frasers, his car, the cost of living, her job, Hugo's course,
Christmas past, summer to come, all these subjects must inevitably lead by a direct route back to Hugo's dismissal. And Duncan saw with irritable despair that all subjects would lead to it because he was he and they were they and the dismissal lay between them like an unavoidable spectre at their dismal feast. From time to time he lifted his eyes from his plate, hoping that she would respond to that famous smile of his, that smile that was growing stiff with insincere use, but each time he looked at her he saw that she was staring fixedly at him, eating hardly anything, her expression concentrated, dispassionate, and somehow dogged. And her eyes had lost their kingfisher flash. They were dull and dead like smoky glass.
So they hadn't had enough then, she and her subdued, morose husband? They wanted to see him abject, not merely referring with open frankness to the dismissal as he had done, but explaining it, apologizing. Well, they should have his explanation. There was no escape. Carefully, he placed his knife and fork side by side on his empty plate. Precisely, but very politely, he refused his hostess's offer of more. He took a deep breath as he often did at the beginning of a board meeting, as he had so very often done at those board meetings when Hugo Crouch pressed insistently for staff rises.
"My dear Elizabeth," he began, "my dear Hugo, I know why you asked me here tonight and what you've been hinting at ever since I arrived. And because I want to enjoy your very delightful company without any more awkwardness, I'm going to do here and now what you very obviously want me to do--that is, explain just how it happened that I suggested Hugo would be happier away from Frasers."
Elizabeth said, "Now, Duncan, listen..."
"You can say your piece in a moment, Elizabeth. Perhaps you'll be surprised when I say I am entirely to blame for what happened. Yes, I admit it, the fault was all mine." He lifted one hand to silence Hugo who was shaking his head vehemently. "No, Hugo, let me finish. As I said, the fault was mine. I made an error of judgment. Oh, yes, I did. I should have been a better judge of men. I should have been able to see when I promoted you that you weren't up to the job. I blame myself for not understanding--well, your limitations."
They were silent. They didn't look at him or at each other.
"We men in responsible positions," he said, "are to blame when the men we appoint can't rise to the heights we envisage for them. We lack vision, that's all. I take the whole burden of it on my shoulders, you see. So shall we forgive and forget?"
He had seldom seen people look so embarrassed, so shamefaced. It just went to show that they were no match for him. His statement had been the last thing they had expected and it was unanswerable. He handed her his plate with its little graveyard of chicken bones among the potato skins and as she took it he saw a look of baulked fury cross her face.
"Well, Elizabeth," he said, unable to resist, "am I forgiven?"
"It's too late now. It's past," she said in a cold, stony voice. "It's too late for any of this.
"I'm sorry if I haven't given you the explanation you wanted, my dear. I've simply told you the truth."
She didn't say any more. Hugo didn't say anything. And suddenly Duncan felt most uncomfortable. Their condemnatory faces, the way they both seemed to shrink away from him, was almost too much for him. His heart began to pound and he had to tell himself that a racing heart meant nothing, that it was pains and not palpatations he must fear. He reached for one of his little white pills ostentaciously, hoping they would notice what they had done to him.
When still they didn't speak, he said, "I think perhaps I should go now."
"But you haven't had coffee," said Elizabeth.
"Just the same it might be better..."
"Please stay and have coffee," she said firmly, almost sternly, and then she forced a smile. "I insist."
Back in the sitting room they offered him brandy. He refused it because he had to drive home, and the sooner he could begin that drive the happier he would be. Hugo had a large brandy, which he drank at a gulp, the way brandy should never be drunk unless one had had a shock or were steeling oneself for something, Elizabeth had picked up the evening paper and was talking in a very artificial way about a murder case which appeared on the front page.
"I really must go," said Duncan.
"Have some more coffe? It's not ten yet."
Why did they want him to llay? Or, rather, why did she? Hugo was once more busy with the brandy bottle. He would have thought his company must be as tiresome to them as theirs were to him. They had got what they wanted, hadn't they? He drank his second cup of coffee so quickly that it scalded his mouth and then he got up.
"Thank you." It was over. He was going to make his escape and he need never see them again. And suddenly he felt that he wouldn't be able to get out of that house fast enough. Really, since he had made his little speech, the atmosphere had been completely disagreeable. "Good night, Elizabeth," he said. What platitudes could he think of that weren't too ludicrous? "Thank you for the meal. Perhaps we will meet again some day."
'I hope we shall and soon, Duncan," she said, but she didn't offer him her cheek. Through the open door, the rain was driving in against her long skirt. She stood there, watching him go out with Hugo, letting the light pour out to guide them round the corner of the house.
As soon as he was round that corner, Duncan felt an unpleasant jerk of shock. His car lights were blazing, full on.
"How did I come to do a thing like that?"
"I suppose you left them on to see your way to the door," said Hugo, "and then forgot them."
"I'm sure I did not."
"You must have. Hold the umbrella and I'll try the ignition." Leaving Duncan on the flooded path under the inadequate umbrella, Hugo got into the driving seat and inserted the ignition key. Duncan watched him, stamping his feet impatiently. "Not a spark," said Hugo. "Your battery's flat."
"It can't be."
"I'm afraid it is. Try for yourself."
Duncan tried, getting very wet in the process.
"We'd better go back in the house. We'll get soaked out here."
"What's the matter?" said Elizabeth, who was still standing in the doorway.
"His battery's flat. The car won't start."
Of coure it wasn't their fault but somehow Duncan felt that it was. It had happened, after all, at their house, to which they had fetched him for a disgraceful purpose. He didn't bother to soften his annoyance. "I'm afraid I'll just have to borrow your car, Hugo."
Elizabeth closed the door. "We don't have a car anymore. We couldn't afford to run it. It was either keeping a car or taking the boys away from school, so we sold it."
"I see. Then if I might just use your phone, I'll ring for a hired car. I've a mini-cab number in my wallet." One look at her face told him that wasn't going to be possible either. "Now you'll say you've had the phone cut off." Damn her! Damn them both!
"We could have afforded it, of course. We just didn't need it anymore. I'm sorry, Duncan, I just don't know what you can do. But we may as well all go and sit down where it's warmer."
"I don't want to sit down," Duncan almost shouted. "I have to get home." He shook off the hand she had laid on his arm and which seemed to be forcibly detaining him. "I must just walk to the nearest house with a phone."
Hugo opened the door. The rain was more like a wall of water than a series of drops. "In this?"
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Duncan cried fretfully.
"Stay the night," said Elizabeth calmly. "I really don't know what you can do but stay the night."
The bed was just what he would have expected a bed in the Crouch menage to be--hard, narrow, and cold. She had given him a hot water bottle, which was an object he hadn't set eyes on in ten years. And Hugo had lent him a pair of pajamas. All the time this was going on, he had protested that he couldn't stay, that there must be some other way, but in the end he had yielded. Not that they had been welcoming. They had treated the whole thing as if--well, how had they treated it? Duncan lay in the dark, clutching the bottle between his knees, and tried to assess just what their attitude had been. Fatalistic, he thought, that was it. They had behaved as if this were inevitable, that there was no escape for him, and here, like it or not, he must stay.
Escape was a ridiculous word, of course, but it was the sort of word you used when you were trapped somewhere for a whole night in the home of people who were obviously antagonistic, if not hostile. Why had he been such a fool as to leave those car lights on? He couldn't remember that he had done and yet he must have. Nobody else would have turned them on. Why should they?
He wished they would go to bed too. That they hadn't he could tell by the light, the rectangular outline of dazzlement, that showed round the frame of his bedroom door. And he could hear them talking, not the words but the buzz of conversation. These late Victorian houses were atrociously built, of course. You could hear every sound. The rain drumming on the roof sounded as if it were pounding on cardboard rather than on slates. He didn't think there was much prospect of sleep. How could he sleep with the noise and all that on his mind, the worry of getting the car moved, of finding some way of getting to the office? And it made him feel very uneasy their staying up like that, particularly as she had said, "If you'll go into the bathroom first, Duncan, we'll follow you." Follow him! That must have been all of half an hour ago. He pressed the switch of his bedlamp and saw that it was eleven-thirty. Time they were in bed if she had to get to her school in the morning and he to his accountancy course.
Once more in the dark, but for that gold-edged rectangle, he considered the car lights question again. He was certain he had turned them out. Of course it was hard to be certain of anything when you were as upset as he. The pressure they had put on him had been simply horrible and the worst moments those when he had been alone with Hugo while that woman was fishing the ancient pullet she'd dished up to him out of her oven. Really, she had been a hell of a time getting that main course when you considered what it had amounted to. Could she...? Only a madwoman would do such a thing and what possible motive could she have had? But if you lived in a remote place and you wanted someone to stay in your house overnight, if you wanted to keep him there, how better than to immobilize his car? He shivered, even while he told himself such fancies were absurd.
At any rate, they were coming up now. Every board in the house creaked and the stairs played a tune like a broken old violin. He heard Hugo mumble something--the man had drunk far too much brandy--and then she said, "Leave all the rest to me."
Another shiver that hadn't very much to do with the cold ran through him. He couldn't think why it had. Surely, that was quite a natural thing for a woman to say on going to bed. She only meant, You go to bed and I'll lock up and turn off the lights. He had often said it when his wife was alive. And yet it was a phrase familiar to him in quite another context. Turning on his side away from the light and into fresh caverns of icy sheet, he tried to think where he had heard it. It came from Macbeth. Lady Macbeth said it when she and her husband were plotting the old king's murder. And what was the old king's name? Douglas? Donal?
Someone had come out of the bathroom and someone else gone in. Did they always take such ages getting to bed? The lavatory flush roared and a torrent rushed through pipes that seemed to pass under his bed. He heard footsteps across the landing and a door closing. Apparently, they slept in the next room to his. He turned over, longing for the light to go out. It was a pity there was no key in that lock so that he could have locked his door.
As soon as the thought had formed and been uttered in his brain, he thought how fantastic it was. What, lock one's bedroom door in a private house? Suppose his hostess came in in the morning with a cup of tea? She would think it very odd. And she might come in. She had put this bottle in his bed and had placed a glass of water on the table. Of course he couldn't dream of locking the door, and why should he want to? One of them was in the bathroom again.
Suddenly he found himself thinking about one of the men he had sacked and who had threatened him. The man had said "Don't think you'll get away with this, and if you show your ugly face within a mile of my place you may not live to regret it." Of course he had got away with it and had nothing to regret. On the other hand, he hadn't shown himself withinn a mile of the man's place...The light had gone out at last. Sleep now, he told himself. Empty your mind or think about something nice, your summer holiday in the villa, for instance, think about that.
The gardens would be wonderful with the oleanders and the bougainvillea. And the sun would warm his old bones as he sat on his terrace, looking down through the cleft in the pines at the blue triangle of the Mediterranean which was brighter and gentler than that woman's eyes...Never mind the woman, forget her. Perhaps he should have the terrace raised and extended and set up on it that piece of statuary--surely Roman--which he had found in the pinewoods. It would cost a great deal of money, but it was his money. Why shouldn't he spend his own? He must try to be less sensitive, he thought, less troubled by this absurd social conscience which, for some reason, he had lately developed. Not, he reflected with a faint chuckle, that it actually stopped him spending money or enjoying himself. It was a nuisance, that was all.
He would have the terrace extended and maybe a black marble floor laid in the salon. Frasers' profits looked as if they would hit a new high this year. Why not get that fellow Churchouse to do all their printing for them? If he was really down on his luck and desperate he would be bound to work for a cut rate, jump at the chance, no doubt...
God damn it, it was too much! They were talking in there. He could hear their whisperings, rapid, emotional almost, through the wall. They were an absurd couple, no sense of humor between the pair of them. Intense, like characters out of some tragedy.
"The labour we delight in physics pain"--Macbeth had said that, Macbeth who killed the old king. And she had said it to him, Duncan, when he had apologized for the trouble he was causing. The king was called Duncan too. Of course he was. He was called Duncan and so was the king and he too, in a way, was an old king, the monarch of the Fraser empire. Whisper, whisper, breathed the wall at him.
He sat up and put on the light. With the light on, he felt better. He was sure, though, that he hadn't left those car lights on. "Leave all the rest to me..." Why say that? Why not say what everyone said, "I'll see to everything"? Macbeth and his wife had entertained the old king in their house and murdered him in his bed, although he had done them no harm, done nothing to them but be king. So it wasn't a parallel, was it? For he, Duncan Fraser, had done something, something which might merit vengeance. He had sacked Hugo Crouch and taken away his livelihood. It wasn't a parallel.
He turned off the light, sighed, and lay down again. They were still whispering. He heard the floor creak as one of them came out of the bedroom. It wasn't a parallel--it was much more. Why hadn't he seen that? Lady Macbeth and her husband had no cause, no cause...A sweat broke out on his face and he reached for the glass of water. But he didn't drink. It was stupid not to but...The morning would soon come. "O, never shall sun that morrow see!" Where did that come from? Need he ask?
Whoever it was in the bathroom had left it and gone back to the other one. But only for a moment. Again he heard the boards creak, again someone was moving about on that dark landing. Dark, yes, pitch dark, for they hadn't switched the light on this time. And Duncan felt then the first thrill of real fear, which didn't subside after the shiver had died but grew and gripped him in a terror the like of which he hadn't known since he was a little boy and had been shut up in the nursery cupboard of his father's manse. He mustn't be afraid, he mustn't. He must think of his heart. Why should they want vengeance? He'd explained. He'd told them the truth, taking the full burden of blame on himself. The room was so dark that he didn't see the door handle turn. He heard it. It creaked very softly. His heart began a slow, steady pounding and he contracted his body, forcing it back against the wall. Whoever it was had come into the room. He could see the shape of him--or her--as a denser blackness in the dark.
"What...? Who...? he said, quavering, his throat dry. The shape grew fluid, glided away, and the door closed softly. They wanted to see if he was asleep. They would kill him when he was asleep. He sat up, switched on the light, and put his face in his hands. "O, never shall sun that morrow see!" He'd put all that furniture against the door, that chest of drawers, his bed, the chair. His throat was parched now and he reached for the water, taking a long draught. It was icy cold.
They weren't whispering anymore. They were waiting in silence. He got up and put his coat round him. In the bitter cold he began lugging the furniture away from the walls, lifting the iron bedstead that felt so small and narrow when he was in it but was so hideously weighty.
Straightening up from his second attempt, he felt it, the pain in his chest and down his left arm. It came like a clamp, like a clamp being screwed and at the same time slowly heated red-hot. It took his body in hot iron fingers and squeezed his ribs. And sweat began to pour from him as if the temperature in the room had suddenly risen tremendously. Oh God, Oh, God, the water in the glass...! They would have to get him a doctor, they would have to, they couldn't be so pitiless. He was old and tired and his heart was bad.
He pulled the coat round the pain and staggered out into the black passage. Their door--where was their door? He found it by fumbling at the walls, scrabbling like an imprisoned animal, and when he found it he kicked it open and swayed on the threshold, holding the pain in both his hands.
They were sitting on their bed with their backs to him, not in bed but sitting there, the shapes of them silhouetted against the light of a small low-bulbed bedlamp.
"Oh, please," he said, "please help me. Don't kill me, I beg you not to kill me. I'll go on my knees to you. I know I've done wrong, I did a terrible thing. I didn't make an error of judgment. I sacked Hugo because he wanted too much for the staff, he wanted more money for everyone and I couldn't let them have it. I wanted my new car and my holidays. I had to have my villa--so beautiful, my villa, my gardens. Ah, God, I know I was greedy but I've borne the guilt of it for months, every day--on my conscience--the guilt of it..." They turned, two white faces, implacable, merciless. They rose and came towards him, scrambling across their bed. "Have pity on me," he screamed. "Don't kill me. I'll give you everything I've got, I'll give you a million..."
But they had seized him with their hands and it was too late. She had told him it was too late.
"In our house!" she said.
"Don't," said Hugo. "That's what Lady Macbeth said. What does it matter whether it was in our house or not?"
"I wish I'd never invited him."
"Well, it was your idea. You said let's have him here because he's a widower and lonely. I didn't want him. It was ghastly the way he insisted on talking about firing me when we wanted to keep off the subject at any price. I was utterly fed up when he had to stay the night."
"What do we do now?" said Elizabeth.
"Get the police, I should think, or a doctor. It's stopped raining. I'll get dressed and go."
"But you're not well! You kept throwing up."
"I'm okay now. I drank too much brandy. It was such a strain all of it, nobody knowing what to talk about. God, what a business! He was alright when you went into his room just now, wasn't he?"
"Half-asleep, I thought. I was going to apologize for all the racket you were making but he seemed nearly asleep. Did you get any of that he was trying to say when he came in here? I didn't."
"No, it was just gibberish. We couldn't have done anything for him, darling. We did try to catch him before he fell."
"I know."
"He had a bad heart."
"In more ways than one, poor old man," said Elizabeth, and she laid a blanket gently over Duncan, though he was past feeling hot or cold or guilt or fear or anything any more.
