Godfrey got his third cushy fight at the Anglo-American Sporting Club in June. It was against a man called Roy Owen, who had won well in the lists a few years ago and had then gone to America. He had made big money there, but he had had too many hammerings in the process. He was a pawky fighter, not in the least interested in stopping his opponent, only in avoiding being stopped, and garnering the points on the way so that he stood a fair chance of a decision. He was the right sort of opponent for Little God, who for the first time since the Kio fight began to open up in his old style. Owen scored a fair number of times on Godfrey’s nose, but there was no dynamite in the glove, it scarcely hurt, it was just a tick in the referee’s book: it was good boxing but arid, unambitious, the sort Godfrey had always despised. In going for a knock-out now he showed his contempt and found some of the confidence he had lost.
He did not get his knock-out but it was a narrow points decision in his favour, and the members at the dining tables clearly liked him. The fight did him more good psychologically than either of the other two.
He left the Anglo-American Sporting Club just as soon as he could get away and drove back to Battersea where Pearl was waiting for him.
As always after a fight his impulses were more than ever arrogant, conquesting, had elements in them of a continuing wish to destroy. Pearl bore it because sometimes in her now was a wish to be destroyed.
When she at last said she must go he rubbed his chin: and said: ‘Why not spend the night here?’
‘I can’t! You must know that. I’m supposed to be visiting my family.’
‘D’you think he believes it?’
‘Well, of course! But not if I stay any longer.’
‘He only has to check. Just once he has to check.’
Pearl was silent; then she slid out of bed, began hurriedly to dress. He watched her lazily.
‘Isn’t it right? He only has to do that.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. But if he doesn’t, if he still believes what I tell him—’
‘Why should he? I’d like to tell him to his face.’
‘That would be a way of getting back at me, wouldn’t it. You’d really like that.’
‘He wouldn’t have the guts to divorce you even then. I’d take a bet on it.’
‘Why do you still hate him so much? It’s over now, and you’ve recovered. You’ve only gained, in a way, by that fight – in reputation, I mean. And you’ve got me – as much as you want me …’ She stopped but he did not answer. ‘ You don’t want me for keeps, only when the fancy takes you.’
‘Who says I don’t want you for keeps?’
‘Well, for marriage.’
‘Oh, marriage. What’s that? A ball and chain.’
She zipped up her skirt, opened her bag and took out a comb, began to tug at her hair. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s how you see it. What’s the good of marriage when you only have to crook your finger … Isn’t that enough revenge on Wilfred?’
He sat up in bed and licked a swelling on his lip. ‘Every time I look at myself in the mirror, Oyster. Every time.’
‘It might have happened in any fight.’
‘But it didn’t. And it wouldn’t. Know what a girl said to me the other day – girl I hadn’t seen for a year or more? “ For crying out loud, Godfrey,” she says, “who bent your hooter?”’
Pearl struggled into her coat. ‘Did it make her any less loving?’
He smiled, but did not speak.
She had got to the door. ‘Sometimes I think you hate me as much as you do Wilfred.’
‘I don’t hate anybody,’ he said. ‘I feel real good.’
‘Despise, then,’ she said. ‘Perhaps that’s the word. Despise.’
It was a sultry July, the hottest in London, the papers said, since some time or other. The three fine days and a thunderstorm of a typical English summer were repeated at intervals all through the month. St Swithin’s day, significantly, was the hottest of all.
On it Pearl deliberately cut an appointment with Godfrey and went with Veronica Portugal to a swimming pool in Roehampton. She lay in the sun or the water all afternoon letting the impersonal warmth seep into her and the dark desire drain away. When she was away from him her blind mind stared into the dark, comprehending and recognizing nothing reasonable in her behaviour. When she was with him only the need and the fulfilment of the need existed; love was a forgotten word, hatred nearer to the root of her submission.
This time, this time only she had broken free, exercised a puny independence, stretched damp wings, knowing that she was no freer for doing it but was only postponing; some part of her subconscious already busy in horrid fascination with the price she’d have to pay. And yet resenting it. Resenting it.
Veronica Portugal had problems of her own with Simon, and it was clear presently that she had invited Pearl for the afternoon to use her as a confidante. Pearl didn’t mind. She listened to Veronica with a quiet, lazy detachment, asking a question here, putting in a comment there; all that was needed. Veronica’s problems seemed so simple compared with her own, so surface-borne, so upper-class, so resolvable within a limited code of behaviour. She felt she had become a savage, without roots or guidance, existing in this polite civilized matter-of-fact world but not belonging to it. Wilfred belonged to it. Godfrey sang tribal songs that only her blood understood.
In the early evening, warm and tired and refreshed she drove home, Veronica leaving her on her doorstep. Wilfred, who had been in two hours and imagining the worst, was just in time to see Veronica driving away. The lines of petulance and distrust which so often settled on his face nowadays cleared on the instant and he brushed aside Pearl’s mild apologies and would not have her cooking at this late hour. They went out to dinner to a little place in Draycott Avenue – within walking distance; no need for a taxi – where he had heard the escargots were specially plentiful and good. Knowing his moods and his glances to the last shade, Pearl felt her contentment ebbing away into little shallow gullies of new emotion. She saw immediately ahead an event in which she would be the destroyer instead of the destroyed.
A couple of days later Wilfred was unwell in the morning and had only just left for the office when Godfrey called. Pearl tried to prevent him from coming in but he came.
‘Ssh! The woman’s upstairs!’
‘Where was you on Wednesday?’
‘I – went out … with a friend, a woman friend. It was so hot.’
‘So you let me down.’
‘Yes …’ She steeled her eyes at him. ‘ You’ve done it to me.’
He took her arm, fingering the arm through the thin silk. ‘Well, don’t do it to me again! I waited near on an hour.’
‘It was just the way I felt … When I waited for you I waited four hours.’
‘Don’t do it again. I warn you. It’s a dirty trick. When next?’
Pearl listened for Mrs Jamieson’s footsteps.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Not before then?’
‘Not before then.’
‘What time?’
‘Usual. Three-thirty. Please go.’
‘O.K., O. K. Only please don’t let me down.’
‘I’ll please myself,’ Pearl said challengingly, just before she closed the door. But she knew this time she would go.
Sam Windermere, the promoter, was putting on a big show at Belle Vue, Manchester, with the main fight a return contest for the Middle-weight Championship of Great Britain. Second on the bill, and nearly as big a draw, was Manchester’s own Billy Biddle against the rising new star Hay Tabard, in the Welter-weight division. Tabard was at present Jude Davis’s most precious possession. He was a tall blond young man, son of a German prisoner of war, and he looked like being the best welter-weight – or later middle-weight – prospect of his generation. He was not yet nineteen, and he drew crowds of admirers everywhere he went for his looks and for his fine promise. Jude had had splendid offers for him from two bigger managers but he was not interested in selling. He was too valuable a potential. Jude had been bringing him along cautiously. Because of his youth, two-minute rounds instead of three-minute rounds had been imposed by the B.B. B. of C., and his opponents had been carefully selected to gain him useful experience without imperilling his confidence. This was his first important fight, and it was the only one Jude had on this bill.
Godfrey was not involved except as a sparring mate for Tabard. Nearly all Jude’s stable had been utilized from time to time: Tom Bushey, two stone heavier, and Godfrey, a stone and a half lighter, among them: Bushey for his weight, Godfrey for his speed. It gave variety to the practice rounds and all added to Tabard’s knowledge of ring-craft.
Two or three days before a fight the sparring ended, so the Tuesday session was the last that Tabard undertook. After that it would be the bags or the ball with light shadow boxing. Godfrey had watched the blond boy a good deal and knew his merits and his weaknesses. So of course did Prince, and while Hay was a tremendous puncher for his weight, and a beautiful mover, he had defensive faults which Prince was working hard on. Hay was still vulnerable to in-fighting, and at times allowed his natural aggressiveness to lead him into trouble. Often Godfrey, who to his credit had learned a lot from his defeat, was able to land lightly on Hay’s jaw and nose from an inside position.
On the Tuesday Davis came down to the gym in the afternoon and watched Tabard box a couple of rounds with a man of his own weight. Godfrey, who had his appointment with Pearl at 3.30, was to follow the other spar mate. For the last few days he had been carefully working something out.
Davis watched the first round between them and then was called to the telephone. This was the moment.
Godfrey dodged round his big opponent, trying a few left jabs and picking off some fairly hearty lefts in return. Then he invited the manoeuvre that he knew Tabard would not resist: head-feinting, a dummy move to the left and a circle to the right. It was like waving a rag at a bull, you knew it would come at you because this was what it had done before. Hay came at him, hitting him high on the forehead, and Godfrey was just going backwards enough to take the bite out of it. A fierce right he slipped over his shoulder so that Hay’s two fists were just outside the line of his body, then he uppercut him with his right.
He’d done this before at half power, registering the point without aiming to damage. (When he landed like this Hay got a lecture from Prince.) This time he put all the power of his body and the balance of his feet and the resentment of his mind into the one blow. Hay half saw it, though his own left arm hid sight of it until too late; he jerked away and the uppercut missed his chin and caught him under the nose.
Even with the heavy practice gloves it seemed to lift his nose half off his face. He staggered back, sagged at the knees, hit the ropes and slid into a sitting position on the canvas.
He was not down for a moment before he was struggling to get up, but by then Prince had leapt into the ring and was bending over him and pulling off his head guard. Two other boxers were in the ring. Hay was standing up, blood flooding from his nose, crimsoning his gloves and his chest. He looked dazed and kept shaking his head, so that Prince’s efforts to plug his nose were not successful.
Godfrey went over and began to say he was sorry. Pat Prince turned on him and told him he was a clumsy vicious little rat. Then Jude Davis came in.
‘It’s O.K.,’ said Tabard. ‘I’ll be O. K. in a minute. It just shook me up. I’m O.K.’
‘Sorry, Hay,’ said Godfrey. ‘I didn’t mean it like that: you just walked into it.’
‘It’s O.K., I tell you. We was sparring fair enough. Yeh, I walked into it. I’ll be O.K.’
‘Let me see,’ said Davis. ‘ Bring a chair, Martin. Sit down Hay. Let me see.’
‘Keep your head still, for Pete’s sake,’ snarled Prince, trying to get the swab up Hay’s nostril. ‘You little louse, you,’ he said to Godfrey, ‘get out of my light!’
‘Well, stone me!’ said Godfrey, all injured innocence, ‘I was supposed to be boxing, wasn’t I? He walked into me like you walk into a wall.’
‘Get Doc Wright,’ Jude Davis said quietly.
‘He was too little and too quick,’ Tabard said. ‘If he’d been my own size, I’d not have been open the way I was. See.’
‘Sorry, Hay.’
‘O.K., God, you wasn’t to know.’
Tom Bushey had gone in to telephone the doctor. Jude Davis looked across at Godfrey, but the light on his glasses hid his expression. Pat Prince had at last managed to get plugs in the injured nose, but it was already swollen and he was in a good deal of pain. Bushey came out and said the doctor would be along in a quarter of an hour. Godfrey got Bushey to untie his gloves for him, then he put a towel round his shoulders and stood watching the scene.
Though careful to keep his face expressionless, his heart was seething with joy. He didn’t know whether Hay’s nose was broken, but anyway he would not be fighting on Friday night. There were ways after all of getting back at Jude Davis without fighting Jude himself. And more than that, who could blame a spar mate for injuring a man twenty-two pounds heavier? It would do Hay no good when it got out, and that was a pity because he was not a bad kid. But it would do him, Godfrey, good with everyone except Jude and Pat. And they could stuff it. Jude would miss his big match on Friday and his darling boy would have a nose like an electric bulb by then. And Godfrey’s name, for all Jude might do, would be talked about in the circles where it mattered.
The doctor came but couldn’t pronounce till he’d had an X-ray. Godfrey wanted to slip off but Jude made him stay till the very end, so that it was four o’clock before he could get away. During it all Jude had only spoken three sentences to Godfrey. The first was: ‘ Stay around.’ The second was: ‘Give him air, you’ve done enough.’ The third was: ‘You can clear out now.’
Godfrey ‘ cleared’. He slid into his Velox and gunned the engine and forced his way out into the traffic, so that the taxi drivers swore at him. He made the V-sign back. He was feeling good. This had done him more good than anything since the Kio fight. He was feeling wonderful, as good as after a top win in the ring. The last effects of the defeat were gone. He knew he was on his way up again and on his way up for keeps this time. The Kio defeat had not destroyed him, it had tempered him, taught him, matured him. He knew all there was to know now. If Jude Davis did not get him the right fights he’d make a fuss and change stables. Little God would be known everywhere as an awkward customer but a coming champion. Managers would swallow a lot to handle a winner. Even his face didn’t matter so much now.
It was great. And he wanted Pearl. He wanted her two ways, because he wanted her as a woman and because afterwards he wanted to tell her all he’d done and all he planned to do. It was the way he used to talk to Flora, and now for the first time he wanted to talk this way to Pearl. If she got quit of this old coddler he would even marry her as he’d once planned. She was learning fast and was the classiest-looking girl he would ever have, and it might be good to have her for keeps. She was hooked firm enough now to stand him having a few other interests on the side.
For the first time he even felt almost free of Flora. Not free so that you could forget her but free so that remembering her didn’t poison everything you were trying to enjoy.
He parked his car, using his bumper to shove another locked car forward, and then ran upstairs to his room. Pearl wasn’t there. There was a scribbled note on the paper covering his table. ‘Waited half an hour. Why don’t you find somebody else who will wait longer?’
It was like a blow in the face, as if Kio had suddenly come back. It was like an insult to his manhood. He stood in the middle of the room and cursed her aloud for three minutes. The fury kept volcanoing up in him. All his feeling good turned into feeling angry. He’d been let down again. Today of all days. Let down! It was the worst insult he’d ever suffered at the hands of a woman. He’d show her.
He went out of the door, and plaster floated from the slam as he skittered down three flights of stairs and out to his car. More goods-wagon shunting got him out of the small space he’d just got in; and then he was off down Latimer Road and across Battersea Bridge. When he came to Cadogan Mews he did not park in there but round the corner out of sight. When he rang the bell he carefully took shelter in the overhang of the door so that no one looking out of the window should see him. When the door opened he was round the corner with his foot in the way before she could shut the door again.
‘Godfrey! Go away! I’ve had enough—’
He put his whole weight against the door and it jerked open, nearly knocking her over.
‘You stupid kook, standing me up again!’
She was in an apron, green turtle neck jumper, short linen skirt; she stared at him, ice and fire flashing, then she looked down at her hand, sucked the knuckles.
‘You hurt me, lurching against the door. Will you please go!’
‘Standing me up! No woman can do that! It’s the second time—’
‘What d’you think I am, some sort of slavey to be at your beck and call!—’
‘I couldn’t get away! I tell you! D’you think I did it on purpose?’
‘What does it matter! You were late! I couldn’t wait any longer!—’
‘So you couldn’t wait. So I came on here.’
She looked past him, at the warm windy street feeling old, as if she had lived years in the last month. ‘Please go. You’re making a scene.’
‘I’ll make more of a scene before I’m done.’
‘Some other time.’
‘Now.’
‘You must be crazy.’
‘So I’m crazy.’
She leaned against the banister, breathing out despair at the futility of it all. ‘Oh, Godfrey, I wish I could finish with you for ever. You haven’t any idea … How d’you suppose I feel when you come bullying your way in like this?’
‘Now,’ he said.
‘It’s a quarter to five. Wilfred might be back in half an hour.’
‘So what does it matter if he is?’
Her eyes lit up with anger and fright. ‘No! I tell you it’s impossible! Haven’t you any sense? I’ll – we’ll make another date. Perhaps—’
‘Now.’ He kicked the door to behind him.
She said: ‘If you come any nearer I’ll phone the police.’
‘Phone away.’
‘Godfrey! Haven’t you any sense? What’s come over you? Tomorrow perhaps.’
‘Now,’ he said.
She made a move towards the telephone which was in the hall, but he blocked the way. She turned and ran up the stairs where the other telephone was. He went after her. She tried to lock the door but he burst it open. He reached her as she grabbed the telephone and caught her under the arms; they fell together, heavily, but he under and his hard body suffered no hurt. He began to kiss her hungrily, wickedly, like a wild man short of food. She knelt up and hit at him and he laughed at her and pushed her back on the floor, his hands grasping her expertly, creating the sensations in her that undermined her will. She tried to get up again and this time he let her because he had the sense to see she was struggling less violently. They stood up together and he pushed her towards her bedroom.
She struggled all the way but no longer with the violence of the first moment. He began to murmur what passed with him for endearments, because he knew now that this was another fight he couldn’t lose.
Angell had not been feeling well all week. He had had peculiar pains of a sort he was beginning to become familiar with, and also he was anxious about his heart and his blood pressure. He had been sick with worry for months, and now he had been overdoing it in other ways. It was a commonplace history for an older man to marry a young girl and die comparatively early as a consequence – everyone knew that. He thought angrily of Matthewson’s little lecture a year or more ago when he had suggested that the human character was healthier for being outward looking and for having a little worry to contend with. What criminal nonsense doctors talked! They flashed advice about like touts on a racecourse, and with as little sense of responsibility. He would have liked to go to Matthewson and say to him: ‘Look, I took your advice, and see the mess it has landed me in! You ought to be in prison!’
He had kept himself at work, but his work suffered and he was a trial to Miss Lock and to everyone in the office. The fact that his business prospered as never before was little consolation. Even a first round defeat of the objectors in the Handley Merrick satellite development plan did little to cheer him. The body and mind, once they are linked on a downward spiral, seem each intent on pulling the other deeper into the abyss.
Even his appetite was a little affected, in that it seemed to demand more personal dainties, and before his workday was fully out he was considering going to his club, but he passed this thought over for what Pearl could make him when he got home: hot buttered toast with strawberry jam and probably cakes to follow. He felt in need of comfort. With luck, if Pearl was in, he would get it.
Even in his present frail state he would not take a taxi, so it was half-past five before he walked slowly round the corner into Cadogan Mews.
The first thing he noticed was that the front door was ajar. This sometimes happened when it was slammed, and was caused by a faulty catch – it was very dangerous and he must remember to get it repaired and to warn Pearl not to be so careless. Did it mean she was out?
Then in the hall the small table lamp by the telephone was overturned. Burglars? His heart froze. The police. Dial 999. But he must be reasonably sure. ‘ Pearl,’ he called in a soft voice.
He peered cautiously through into the drawing-room, where all seemed undisturbed. The kitchen … This showed recent use. Flour and pastry on the table; the electric oven on; nothing inside. He switched it off. Unlike Pearl to waste …
A thump upstairs. Her bedroom was over the kitchen. Perhaps she had slipped up for something. Must not be unduly hasty. He switched the oven on again. It took an effort of will to connive at possible waste; but she would be annoyed if the oven were being heated for—
Somebody was talking. Was it upstairs or perhaps next door? He did not remember ever hearing voices from next door.
Outside a dog barked. It emphasized the silence. All his appetites, the need of his palate for butter and sweet jam, were drying, souring, as in an east wind. He picked his way carefully across his ornate drawing-room, reached the hall, put the lamp upright, picked up the telephone book and smoothed its ruffled pages. A-D had been dropped or knocked over. A-D. He mounted the stairs.
Like all big men he could move very quietly, even when as now he was beginning to sweat and tremble. That dog. It belonged across at No. 35. No discipline. He went into his bedroom. The intervening door was shut but there were movements in the next room. Not voices but movements. Just Pearl. Why did he suppose otherwise? It was at the root of all his malaise.
Without noticing, he had carried his briefcase upstairs, and this he now put on a chair. He had brought some work home with him tonight. It was a matter of material misrepresentation when entering into a contract. He wanted to refresh his mind on Rawlins v Wickham and relevant cases. He pursed his lips to blow out a breath. And then Godfrey laughed.
Angell stumbled and half fell. His stomach revolted as if he had taken poison. A recurrence of the nightmare of Merrick House. He could not stand it. It would drive him out of his mind or bring on a stroke. To be assaulted in his own house … Blows in the face, in the chest …
He clutched the end of the bed while the attack of nausea slowly moved away. Pearl’s voice. He could not hear what she said, for the blood was pounding in his ears. And she was speaking low, anxiously, almost on a note of complaint.
Where a person has been induced to enter into a contract by a material misrepresentation of the other party, he is entitled to have the contract set aside, and not merely to have the representations made good. That was it. Rawlins v Wickham. Life. His own life. Law. Law and order. This was what all his own life meant. Interpretations of the precedents of England, by which men could live peacefully with their neighbours. One lived in a state of contractual harmony. Groping, he fumbled in his pocket, with clumsy fingers took out his key ring, went over the keys like a man reading Braille. The long thin, double-toothed one. He found it at last, slid it into its lock, opened the safe. He groped again at the back, among the documents, the price lists, the wills, discovered the revolver, unwrapped the cheese-cloth, knowing the gun was loaded from last time.
Then he slumped in a chair, the revolver dangling from his hand like a broken stick. He could not defend his honour – he had no courage for that – but at least he could defend his life. Another assault like last time would kill him – the shock would kill him. If he had the strength to pull the trigger he would defend his life.
But if he sat here perfectly quiet until Godfrey left there was little chance of having to do that. Sit perfectly still. Neither of them would come in here. Let them have their lewd play. Let them spawn and copulate on his Hepplewhite bed. It would be the last time. There could never be anything more now. When Godfrey had gone he would confront Pearl. Confront her for the last time and turn her out tonight. It was the only way. He must steel himself. Even loneliness was better than this. He must return to books and paintings and the quiet of the law. Anything was better than this …
Pearl’s voice on a note of complaint again – antagonism almost. Had Godfrey imposed himself, then, forced himself on her? Oh delusion! No more delusion. No woman would allow herself – she would call for help, ring the police, scream. It was useless, even to begin to pretend to oneself …
Except the open front door, the overturned lamp, the interrupted cooking. And Little God. For ever damned, dominant Little God. Capable of over-ruling all other wills, of transgressing all civilized behaviour. The savage at large. The savage in a civilized society, de-civilizing all he came in contact with.
That dog, it was on again. It ought to be shot. Suddenly the dog stopped and Godfrey laughed again. Wilfred shuddered like a man in a fever. Like a man in a fever, sweat was dripping from his forehead. Whatever the rights or wrongs he could make no move to correct them. To steal downstairs, to telephone the police. He knew how long they’d take to come. Godfrey would hear the bell and it would spark off the confrontation Wilfred feared above all others.
Concentrate, think of something else, take a deep breath, steady oneself, bold heart, don’t thump, relax, think of blood pressure. My Lord, under the Trades Disputes and Trades Unions Act of 1927 any strike or lock-out which has any object other than … Under the Solicitors’ Remuneration Act 1881 … remuneration for business done in lieu of ordinary charges … Sell the Dufy. Prices for him were high, might not rise beyond this peak for ten years. He was tired of it. Buy that Kokoschka. Peace and quiet among his lovely furniture. The end of love, the end of fighting. He would grow into an—’
‘So what!’ he heard Godfrey say. ‘ Let him go and – mm … mm … mm …’
‘Godfrey, if there’s to be anything ever between—’
‘Well, you brought it on yourself, Oyster. mm … mm … mm …’
‘Whatever I say you – Not that way.’
The communicating door swung open and Godfrey came in. He had opened the wrong door. He was fully dressed, ready to go. His eyes took in the mistake and then they saw the fat collapsed waxen figure sitting in the chair staring at him.
At first he looked startled, slightly alarmed, then he let out a hoot.
‘Oyster! Come here. I got a surprise for you!’
He came a couple of paces into the room, his mop of black hair flailing and flaunting. He was the savage in the civilized world. He looked out of the tops of his eyes just as he did when he was in the ring.
‘So he’s come to fight me, eh? Just like he did last time.’
In a sick trembling haze Wilfred raised the gun. It wavered all over the place like an insect looking for food. ‘Don’t come near me. I’m telling you! I’m warning you!’
Pearl’s face and naked shoulder came round the door: Wilfred saw this through the haze: her expression was horror, her colour like dirty paper. Godfrey’s face also took on a change. Staring at the revolver he suddenly looked scared, afraid for himself, the bombast and the arrogance gone: he was the little chauffeur. Then something in Wilfred; the same convulsion as that time at school: the utter revolt, the panic revolt against oppression, the bullied become the bullier, the terror turned inside out. He pulled the trigger. Twice.
The revolver clicked emptily on the old dead cartridges.
Godfrey’s face changed again. The alarm was gone in a flash, he began to laugh. He laughed in utter derision. Contempt and triumph. He laughed and Angell pulled the trigger again and there was a great explosion. His hand jerked up as if it had been kicked and Godfrey’s face disappeared. The noise seemed to split the mind. The smell and the smoke hung over the scene like fog in a hollow. When it thinned Godfrey had disappeared. Angell dropped the gun and stared at Pearl who was staring at something on the floor. She came into the room, a frock clutched in front of her, gasped, gave a choked scream.
‘Godfrey … Godfrey … Godfrey! …’
He hadn’t disappeared; he was lying on the floor. He was lying like a parachutist who has fallen from a great height, and part of his neck had gone. Angell’s Aubusson rug was becoming stained with a new dye.