A Sentence of Life Read online

  A novel by

  JULIAN GLOAG

  A SENTENCE OF LIFE

  TO MY FATHER

  Contents

  THE PRISONER

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  A DREAM OF SUMMER

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  THE TENDER DEAD

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  THE LIVING

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  A GOOD WAR

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  A Note on the Author

  The Prisoner

  1

  It wasn’t even in the stop press. He dropped the evening papers onto the seat beside him and looked out of the window. It was already dark. He had been forced to take the later train and, although it was emptier, its slowness vexed him. Not that he was in a hurry to get home, but this stopping at each station destroyed the comfortable rhythm of the usual trip when he knew where he was at every moment of the journey.

  Just a habit, like always ploughing through the ineffable dullness of the evening papers, for instance, or like the mid-morning cup of tea which he didn’t really care for and only took because June would have been upset if he hadn’t.

  And June was dead.

  June is dead—he considered it, waiting for some stronger feeling than the sense of mild surprise which had been his reaction when the superintendent told him this afternoon. “There’s no doubt it was murder, sir.” His scalp ought to have crawled or his palms sweated or something. He looked at his hands, slightly dirty from newsprint but dry as paper. “Thank God you haven’t got clammy hands,” Willy had once said to him in a moment of intimacy before they were married. He smiled.

  He glanced up and the window reflected his smile back to him. Beyond it were the funereal shapes of the pine trees, blacker against the black, and vaguely annoying. Conifers weren’t indigenous to Surrey, and he thought of them as dark trespassers on the deciduous forests of Southern England—oak, ash, beech, elm. He liked places where you could stand and say, “It must have looked just the same in William the Conqueror’s day or when Julius Caesar came.” That was something Willy could never appreciate. She’d give him a quick look and, if he went on too long about it, tell him not to be dotty. If Willy considered history at all, it was as an infinite backward extension of their own life in the stockbroker belt, except that in “the old days” there had been rather more lapses from good taste than are permissible today.

  He wondered how she’d take the news of June’s death. If June had been “people like us,” the judgment would be simple and devastating. But June clearly wasn’t, hadn’t been, like us.

  He tried out an opening sentence: “The police came to see me this afternoon.”

  It sounded ridiculous. But then the whole thing sounded ridiculous.

  “I’m Chief Superintendent George and this is Detective Inspector Symington.”

  Jordan had not expected this when Miss Lawley had told him there were two policemen to see him. “We’re investigating the death of June Emily Singer who, I believe, was in your employ. We’d like to ask you one or two questions.” And he had told them the little he knew. Yes, she had been there six years. No, no trouble. Yes, an excellent worker. It was as though he were giving her a reference—to a pair of heavenly inquisitors. But they weren’t angelic; they were unbelievably ordinary.

  Well, he’d tell Willy as soon as he got home. Thank God she wasn’t the hysterical type.

  It was a tragedy—that was all there was to it. One couldn’t do anything.

  The train slowed gently into Woodley station.

  Jordan Maddox picked up the papers and his attaché case from the seat beside him and stood up.

  She had her coat on when he entered the hall.

  “Hello, where are you off to?”

  “It’s the Wednesday Meeting. You’re late. I thought I was going to have to get Mrs. Hillman to come in and baby-sit. Was there a delay on the line?” She put on her hat in front of the mirror.

  “No. That ghastly hat.”

  “Isn’t it?” With a decisive thrust of the hatpin she secured it to her head. “Dinner’s ready. Cold. All you’ve got to do is carve the beef. I’ve had mine.”

  “Couldn’t you put it off? I rather wanted to talk to you.”

  Willy glanced at him quickly. “You look tired. It’ll only be a couple of hours—old Ma Windbag is ill, laryngitis believe it or not, so that ought to speed things up.” She put her hands on his lapels and kissed his cheek. “I’d like a talk.”

  “Oh well,” he said.

  “Run up and say good night to Georgia, there’s a dear. She’s been a perfect pest all day.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, silly questions.” She went to the door.

  “I hope you gave her appropriately silly answers.”

  “Bye-bye.”

  “So long,” he called.

  “Common,” he heard her say as she shut the door. He grinned momentarily.

  He pulled off his coat and went upstairs slowly. He was tired. Perhaps June’s death had affected him after all.

  “Hello, my Georgia peach.”

  “Hello, Daddy.” She was sitting cross-legged in the centre of the bed and leapt up to kiss him. “Why’d you call me peach?”

  He laughed and held her closely. “Because a peach is fuzzy just like you and has smooth soft skin just like yours and because a peach is the most beautiful fruit of all, just like you.”

  “Just like me!”

  “Just like you.” He laid her down in the bed.

  “What animal will we do tonight?”

  “Let’s see.…” He usually worked out the evening animal story on the train home, but tonight … “What about the lamb?”

  “Oh, not lambs—they’re wet.”

  “Not wet—innocent.”

  “Chris says they’re wet. And besides they’re always getting killed.”

  Jordan smiled. Chris was the kindergarten dogmatist. “Well, the goat?”

  Georgia considered for a moment. “That’ll do,” she said.

  This was the hard part. The story had to rhyme.

  “The goat.

  The goat loves to climb to mountain tops

  With a bell round his neck to chime;

  However steep, he never stops

  Where all others fear to climb.

  The best of goats wear beards and horns

  And—”

  “Daddy, let me!” Georgia bounced with excitement. “And even if they climb for days and days they never get any corns!”

  Jordan laughed.

  Georgia frowned anxiously. “Isn’t it any good?”

  “It’s wonderful. They ought to get corns, oughtn’t they—with all that running around?”

  “Like Mrs. Hillman. Mrs. Hillman has corns something terrible. She showed me—through her stockings.”

  “She did, did she?”

  “They were very ugly. You don’t have c
orns, do you, Daddy?”

  “No. I spend my day sitting down, you see. Most of it.”

  “Mummy has corns, I ‘spect. She never sits down.”

  “No, she doesn’t have corns. She has a lot to do, but she does sit down and rest. When you’re asleep.”

  “She isn’t sitting down tonight, is she?”

  He leaned forward and rubbed his hand in her hair. “Let’s go back to the goat.”

  “But we’ve done the goat. Let’s have another animal. Let’s have the elephant. I like the elephant.”

  He smiled at her. A week or two ago she’d still have been saying ephelant. “Alright.” He liked the elephant too.

  “I’d adore a whiskey.”

  “Soda?” he asked, although she never took it any other way.

  “Mmmm.”

  “What was the meeting like?” She had though—once. The week they’d spent at Sibley just after they were married. They’d hidden a bottle in the suitcase under the bed. Uncle Trevor and Aunt Mary disapproved of a woman’s drinking whiskey—sherry was alright—so he and Willy used to take a nip out of a tooth glass in the bedroom before dinner. Neat or with a bit of water. The damp religious smell of the rectory bedroom had strengthened the vague but pleasurable midnight-feast guilt of their tippling.

  “… fifty-three minutes. A record. But then Mrs. Twining caught me …”

  He handed the drink to her. He took his neat. The room was chilly. Too warm for a fire, too cold for comfort. Another in-between day.

  “Sorry—what?” He hadn’t been listening.

  Willy nodded at the manuscript on the table. “Have you been working?”

  “Not really. Just skipping through it again.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s called ‘The Incidence of Mental Deficiency in Selected Villages of East Anglia, 1840–1937.’”

  “It sounds a bit obscure. Why 1937?”

  “God knows. Yes, it is a bit. The reader says it’s a ‘serious contribution.’” He laughed.

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “If I can get the author to change the title to ‘Sex Life of the Village Idiot.’”

  Willy frowned. “Is that what it’s about?”

  “In parts.”

  “Aunt Mary’s maid—Annie Brierly—doesn’t she have an m.d. sister or something?”

  “Yes.” Only she wasn’t a maid.

  “She has an odd name. Sapphire?”

  “Emerald. She’s a mongoloid.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  They were silent. He stared into the empty fireplace. The andirons were early Georgian, pewter; rather rare, because of the oriental dragons’ heads.

  Willy had closed her eyes and was resting her head against the back of the chair. Her hair was thin and lank, like the Pardoner’s—she ought to wash it more often.

  “The police came to see me this afternoon.”

  “Don’t say you’ve bashed in the car again?” Her eyes remained shut.

  “No. It was about June.”

  “June?”

  “June Singer.”

  “What has she done? Got herself into trouble, I suppose?”

  “No, no. Well, yes—in a way …”

  Willy opened her eyes. “I thought you told me she was on holiday.”

  “She is. I mean, she was. She’s dead.”

  “Dead? How on earth could she be dead? Was she run over?”

  Suddenly Jordan felt as though he were making it all up. “The police think she was murdered.”

  “I can’t believe it.” She sat up. “Give me a cigarette, Jordan. What a frightful tragedy.”

  “Yes.” He offered her the silver cigarette box.

  “How? Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “When did it happen? Where? I bet it was at Brighton.”

  “Willy, I really don’t know. They just said they were investigating her death.”

  “But didn’t you ask?”

  “They were doing all the asking. They insisted on seeing everyone—even old Timothy in production. I must say I was impressed with their thoroughness. Of course it all took time. That’s why I was late.”

  “What did Uncle Colin say?”

  “He wasn’t there. I told you, he’s at the Textbook Fair. He’ll be back tomorrow. I dare say he’ll manage to take it in his stride.” Willy tended to think of Colin as an ogre.

  “You don’t know much. I suppose it was a bit of a shock. It’ll all be in the papers tomorrow, I suppose.”

  “They just weren’t very forthcoming, you know.”

  “Were they from Scotland Yard?”

  “I imagine … No, wait a minute, I don’t think they were.”

  “Poor little Miss Singer. I’m not surprised.”

  “Good God—what do you mean, you’re not surprised?”

  “It was probably a crime passionnel. It’s always the plain ones that get killed for love.”

  “I can’t see June Singer involved in a crime of passion.” But then he could not see June at all in his mind’s eye, except as something habitually there; like a book in the shelf among a hundred other books, you would notice it only when it was gone.

  “Darling, you couldn’t see anyone involved in a crime passionnel. That’s why I love you. I’m glad you’re being sensible about it. I wonder if you shouldn’t call Tom Short.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “He is a solicitor. He knows about these things. Besides there’s sure to be an inquest and you’ll probably be called as a witness. You are her—were her employer. You’ll need a solicitor. And then there’s the trial too.”

  “What trial?”

  “Of Miss Singer’s murderer. There’s bound to be—”

  “Willy, don’t be ridiculous.” He stood up.

  She stared at him for a moment. “I wonder where she went for her holidays.”

  “Not Brighton. No one goes to Brighton in March. Somewhere in the country.” Now how did he know that? He remembered her telling him, because she’d intended to go to Switzerland, then changed her mind. It must have been on Monday when … He heard the superintendent’s voice: “When did you last see Miss Singer, sir?” And he’d said on Friday, Friday evening when she’d gone off on her holidays. But of course he’d seen her on Monday morning, the day before yesterday—he’d have to rectify that.

  “I wonder whether it was a crime passionnel,” said Willy lingeringly. “Well, I’m for bed.”

  He was tired too. Perhaps it was the whiskey.

  He said, “I’ll lock up then.”

  He went round the ground floor, snapping the window locks and bolting the doors. At the back of his mind he realised how ludicrous such precautions were—as though a pack of thieves were waiting nightly to pounce on Woodley. Sometimes he would forget a window and, when Willy accused him in the morning, would murmur “I’m sorry.” But he wasn’t really. One window unlocked, one appointment unkept, one letter unwritten—there was an obscure satisfaction in those.

  At Sibley Rectory, when he was a boy, there had been the same iron ritual of locking up—against the unknown threat of the peaceful villagers.

  He opened the french windows and stepped out onto the narrow stone terrace. There was a small moon flicking behind high, quick clouds, like morse, Crime passionnel. Willy’s easy gallicisms were the badge of two years spent in France—governess to a rich family in Bordeaux—about which he knew nothing and of which there was no other mark upon her. She was quite unable to distinguish a good claret from an indifferent one.

  A crime of passion. If there was a murder, there must be a murderer. It had not even occurred to him.

  He moved back into the dining room and shut the french windows and shot the bolts.

  Willy was already in bed, reading.

  He undressed in front of the electric fire and stood in his pyjamas, watching her.

  “Did you look in on Georgia?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She smiled and started t
o go back to her book.

  “Willy.” He sat down on the edge of her bed. He reached up and took off her glasses and kissed her.

  After a moment she found his hand and squeezed it. “Not tonight, Jordan—it’s curse time.”

  2

  “Bit of a university press project, isn’t it?” Colin Sutlif looked at the huge manuscript on his desk.

  “Yes, we’re rather lucky to get Ballard away from London.”

  Colin smiled; like a kindly headmaster, he was pleased to be contradicted or wilfully misunderstood by a bright pupil. “All these tables and statistics—there’ll be a devil of a comp charge.”

  “Ballard’s agreed to cut several of the tables.”

  Colin examined the title page. “Ummm. Mental Deficiency. Formidable. I hope he’s not going to be an expensive author.” He lifted his head to stare hard at Jordan.

  Jordan found it an unusual effort to play his godfather’s game today. The rules were simple: Jordan could generally win his way so long as he made a show of firm, even arrogant, enthusiasm. But the performance often exhausted him, opening him to the boredom and doubt against which his decision had always battled. This morning he was already tired. But all the same he said, “No, he won’t be an expensive author. I lunch him at Blain’s.”

  Colin made an old-maidenly moue, which indicated pleasure. There were Blain authors and club authors. Important authors were always lunched at the club. It was possible for a Blain author to be stepped up to the club or, if a book had not at all lived up to expectations, for a club author to be demoted to Blain’s. It was an absurd convention really; Blain’s food was much better than the club’s.

  “You really want to do it then?”

  “Yes, I think so. It ought to pay for itself in the long run certainly and …” He tried to think of some decisive reason why this incredibly dull book should be published.

  Colin supplied the reason. “And it’s all part of your ‘campaign’?”

  When he had first come to Sutlif & Maddox, Jordan had been eager to break the claustrophobic concentration on, mainly medical, text-books and do some general publishing—no fiction, nothing wild, nothing unsound. History, perhaps. After fifteen years the closest he’d got to history was “The Incidence of Mental Deficiency in East Anglia.” He switched his burgeoning sigh to a chuckle.

  Colin took it for assent. “That’s settled then. Minimum terms, naturally.” With the palm of his hand he hit the old-fashioned bell on his desk. He leaned back. “I suppose you’re a bit short-handed?”