John lifted, and with a wild fumbling impatience the whole of Emily's
body was covered. Only the head and one arm were left. They had
forgotten the arm. It lay flung out away from the body, half hidden
under an overcoat. Stephen seized it savagely and tried to bend it in
under the mouth of the sack, with brutal ridiculous tugs, like an
ill-tempered man packing an over-loaded bag. John watched him with
growing disapproval.
"That's no good," he said. "Pull down the sack again."
Stephen did so. The sweat now was running down his face; he was spent
and panting, and his composure was all gone. With his black hair ruffled
over his forehead he looked wicked.
Something of his impatience had communicated itself to John, mastering
even his abhorrence. He wanted furiously to get the thing done. It was
he now who seized the recalcitrant arm and thrust it into the sack; it
was he who fiercely pulled the sack over Emily's head, and hid at last
that puffy and appalling face with a long "Ah--h" of relief. At the
mouth of the sack was a fortunate piece of cord, threaded through a
circle of ragged holes.
John Egerton pulled it tight and fumbled at the making of a knot. He
felt vaguely that something special in the way of knots was required--a
bowline--a reef knot or something--not a "granny," anyhow. How was it
you tied a reef knot? Dimly remembered instructions came to him--"the
same string over both times"--or "under," wasn't it?
Stephen crouched at his side, dazedly watching his mobile fingers
muddling with the cord.
A step sounded outside on the pavement. Stephen woke up with a whispered
"My God!" and panic snatched at the pair of them. Feverishly John
finished his knot and tugged at the ends. It was a "granny," he saw, but
a granny it must remain. The steps had surely stopped outside the door.
"Quick," he whispered, and got his right arm under the sack. Stumbling
and straining, with a reckless disturbance of rugs and mats, they
bundled the sagging body of Emily Gaunt into the dining-room. In the
dining-room John Egerton halted and laid his end of her down. He was not
strong, and she was heavy. Stephen clung to her feet, and the two of
them stood listening, very shaky and afraid. There was no sound in the
street now. The steps must have passed the door. From the rear there was
the melancholy hooting of a tug, calling for its waiting barges at
Ginger Wharf. They could hear the slow, methodical panting of her
engines and the furtive swish of the water at her bows. In the garden a
cat was wailing--horribly like a child in pain. To John Egerton these
familiar sounds seemed like the noises of a new world, the new world he
had entered at about a quarter-past nine, when he had become a partner,
an accomplice, in this wretched piece of brutality and deceit. He felt
curiously identified with it now--he was part of it, not merely an
impersonal observer. He had a sensation of personal guilt.
"It's all right," said somebody, very far away, in the voice of Stephen
Byrne--a hoarse and furtive voice.
John Egerton picked up his burden, and another staggering stage was
accomplished into the conservatory.
It was dusk now, but a large moon was up, and thin streams of silver
filtered through the opaque roof and the crowded vine-leaves on to the
long bundle on the floor. It was too light, Stephen thought, for this
kind of work.
When they had halted he said, "Wait a minute, John--I'll go and see if
the coast is clear." He went quickly down the stone steps into the tiny
garden. The long, rich grass of Stephen's "lawn" was drenched and
glistening with dew. There was the heavy scent of something in the
next-door garden, and over all a hot, intolerable stillness. Stephen
became suddenly oppressed with the sense of guilt. Instinctively he
stepped on to the wet grass and rustled softly through it to the river,
his silk socks sponging up the dew.
Over the shallow wall he inspected furtively the silent river. Nothing
moved. It was slack water, and the downward procession of tugs had not
properly begun. The water was smooth; the black reflections of the
opposite trees were sharp and perfect. Down towards Hammersmith a few
lights hung like pendant jewels in the water. Over the far houses there
was a flicker like summer lightning from an electric train. A huddle of
driftwood and odd refuse floated motionless in mid-stream, very black
and visible, waiting for the tide to turn; but along the edges the
stream already crept stealthily down, lapping softly against the moored
ranks of boats, against Stephen's boat riding comfortably beneath him.
In the neighbouring gardens nothing moved. About this hour in the hot
weather the residents of Hammerton Chase would creep out secretly into
their gardens and cast their refuse into the river, and there was often
to be heard at dusk a scattered succession of subdued splashes.
But tonight there were no splashes. Probably the duty was already done.
Stephen remembered incongruously this local habit, and was at once
relieved and disappointed. Too many people prowling in their gardens
might be dangerous. On the other hand, there was a certain safety in a
multitude of splashes. One more would have made no difference.
There were no splashes now, and scarcely any sound: only the fretful
muttering of distant traffic, the occasional rumble of buses on the
far-off bridge, and the small plops of fishes leaping at the moon. Close
to Stephen was an unobtrusive munching in the wired space where Joan's
rabbits were kept. A buck rabbit lay hunched in the moonlight
masticating contentedly the last remnants of the evening cabbage.
Another nosed at the wire-netting, begging without conviction for
further illicit supplies. Stephen stooped down automatically and rubbed
his nose.
But for the moonlight and the present slackness of the tide the moment
was propitious. Stephen walked back more boldly into the conservatory.
"You take the feet," he said.
Without further speech they picked up the bundle and descended
laboriously into the garden. The bright moon intimidated John. He looked
back over his shoulder for people peering out of windows. But only the
windows of his own house commanded the garden; and Mrs. Bantam, his
housekeeper, would be long since in bed. Paddling quietly through the
dew, he, too, thought fantastically of other burdens he had smuggled
down to the river on many a breathless night, pailfuls of
potato-peelings and old tins and ashes. In his mind he gave a mute
hysterical chuckle at the thought. What other residents, he wondered,
had taken this kind of contraband through their gardens in the secret
night? Old Dimple, the barrister--ha! ha!--or Mrs. Ambrose? Perhaps
they, too, had strangled people in their house and consigned them
guiltily to the condoning Thames. Perhaps all those sober, respectable
people were capable, like Stephen, of astonishing crimes. Nothing, now,
could be really surprising. God, what's that?
There was a sudden scuffle and clatter in the dark angle by the river
wall--only the rabbits panicking into corners at the silent coming of a
stranger. But John was aware of the violent beating of his heart.
They laid Emily on the ground and looked over the wall. The tide now had
definitely turned. The middle stream was smoothly moving, oily and
swift. John felt happier. It would soon be over now. An easy thing, to
slip her over into the friendly water ... no more of this hideous
heaving and fumbling with a cold body in a sweat of anxiety.
But to Stephen, regarding doubtfully the close row of boats a hundred
yards downstream, new and disquieting uncertainties had occurred. To
him, too, it had seemed a simple thing to drop Emily over the wall and
let the river dispose of her. But supposing the river failed, flung her
against the mooring-chain of one of those boats, jammed her with the
tide under the sloping bows of Mr. Adamson's decrepit hulk, left her
there till the tide went down.... He saw with a frightening clearness
Emily Gaunt being discovered in the morning on the muddy foreshore of
Hammerton Terrace--discovered by Andrews, the longshoreman, or a couple
of small boys, or Thingummy Rawlins, prowling down from his garden to
tinker with his motor-boat.... No, that would never do.
He said in a low voice, "John ... we'll have to take her out in the
boat ... we can't just drop her.... These damned boats ... supposing
she caught ..."
John Egerton uttered a long groan of disappointment. It was not all
over, then. There must be more liftings and irritations, more damnable
association with this vileness.
"O _Lord_!" he protested. "Stephen, I can't...." His face was pale and
almost piteous under the moon.
Stephen answered him without petulance this time. "John, old man--for
God's sake, see it through ... we _must_ get on, and I can't do it
without you.... I'm awfully sorry.... It's got to be done...." The
appeal in his voice succeeded as an irritable outburst could not have
done.
John Egerton braced himself again. In his own mind he recognized the
practical wisdom of using the boat. He said with a great weariness,
"Come on then."
It was a long and difficult business getting that body into the boat. A
flight of wooden steps led down from the wall to the water, and from
there the boat--a small motor-boat, half-dinghy, half-canoe--had to be
hauled in with a boathook for Stephen to step acrobatically into her and
unfasten the moorings. Then she had to be paddled close up under the
wall and fastened lightly to the steps. While Stephen was doing this a
tug swished by, with a black string of barges clinging clumsily astern.
The red eye of her port-light glared banefully across the water. John
felt that the man in that tug must guess infallibly what work he was at.
A solitary lantern in the stern of the sternmost barge flickered about
the single figure standing at the tiller. He could see the face of the
man, turned unmistakably towards him.
She was travelling fast, and Stephen cursed as her wash took hold of his
little boat and tossed her up and banged her against the wall and the
rickety steps. John, leaning anxiously over, could hear his muttered
execrations as he fended her off.
Then there was a hot, whispered argument--on the best way of getting the
body down, Stephen standing swaying in the boat, with his face upturned,
like some ridiculous moonlight lover, John flinging down assertions and
reasonings in a forced whisper which broke now and then into a harsh
undertone. Stephen thought it should be carted down the steps. John,
with an aching objection to further prolonged contact with the thing,
said it should be lowered with a rope. "Haven't you a bit of rope?" he
reiterated--"a bit of rope--much the best."
Sick of argument, Stephen fumbled with wild mutterings in his locker,
and brought out in a muddle of oil-cans and tools a length of stout
cord. Together they made a rough bight about Emily's middle, together
lifted her to the flat stone parapet of the wall.
When she was there a dog barked suspiciously in Hammerton Terrace;
another echoed him along The Chase. The two men crouched against the
wall in a tense and ridiculous agitation.
Through all these emergencies and arguments and muffled objurgations
there stirred in John's mind ironical recollections of passages in
detective stories, where dead bodies were constantly being transported
with facility and dispatch in any desired direction. It seemed so easy
in the books, it was so damnably difficult in practice--or so they were
finding it.
And always there was the menace of Margery's return; she must be back
soon, she would certainly come out into the garden on a night like
this....
When they had the body stretched flat and ready on the wall, Stephen
went back into the boat. It had sidled down below the steps, and had to
be hauled back. The tide was maddeningly strong. Stephen urged the boat
with imprecations under the wall. To keep it there he must hold on
stoutly with a boathook, and could give little help to John in the
detested task of lowering the sack. John's hands were clammy with sweat
like the hands of a gross man. He gripped the rope with a desperate
energy and thrust Emily gently over the side. The rope dragged and
scraped across the parapet; the body swayed in the moonlight with a
preposterous see-saw motion. When it was half-way to the water, they
heard a tug puffing rhythmically towards them--somewhere beyond the
Island. It was not yet in sight, but a resistless unreasoning panic
immediately invaded them. Stephen, with one free hand, clawed recklessly
at an edge of sacking; John, in a furious effort to quicken the descent
of Emily, lost altogether his control of the rope. The rope slipped
swiftly through his moist and impotent palms. Emily, with an
intimidating bump and a wooden clatter of sculls, fell ponderously into
the boat and lay sprawled across the gunwale. A sibilant "Damned fool!"
slid up the wall from Stephen, almost overbalanced by the sudden descent
of the body. The two men waited with an elaborate assumption of
innocence while the tug fussed past, their hearts pounding absurdly.
Then, before the wash had come, John Egerton stepped gingerly down the
creaking steps, and they pushed out into the rolling reflection of the
moon. The nose of the boat lifted steeply on the oily swell of the tug's
wash, and the head of Emily slipped down with a thump over the thwart,
her feet still projecting obliquely over the side; John Egerton pulled
them in. He looked back with a new disquiet at the still and silvery
houses of Hammerton Terrace, at the dim shrubberies along The Chase.
There were lights in some of the houses. Out there under the public moon
he felt very visible and suspect--a naked feeling.
He heard a remote mutter from Stephen, paddling in the bows: "Too many
of these damned tugs!" and another: "This filthy _moon_!" They were
working slowly against the tide between the Island and the mainland of
The Chase. Stephen's plan was to round the top of the Island, cross the
river, and get rid of Emily in the shadows of the other side, drifting
down with the tide.
Even in the narrow channel by the bank the tide was exasperating, and
paddling the boat, heavy with the engine, was slow work and strenuous.
But the engine would be too noisy. And it was an uncertain starter.